The Krypton Formula
by Sam Hopkins
Summary: Bruce Wayne races against Lex Luthor to discover the source of Superman's powers. How will a newly formed team of heroes react to Bruce's investigation, and what secrets will he uncover? The story's emphasis is on Bruce Wayne the strategist and detective. It features "hard science" analysis of superpowers, and it takes place outside any established DC continuity. Complete.
1. Declarations and possibilities

"Superman doesn't make sense!" Lex Luthor slammed his hands down on the LexCorp boardroom table. "A full understanding of him could unlock new fields in physics, in medicine, in all of science!"

Bruce Wayne glanced up from his phone. These board meetings were usually fairly predictable. Wayne Enterprises had bought a small stake in LexCorp, partly because it was the kind of thing that Wayne Enterprises would do, and partly so that Bruce could keep an eye on Luthor in a business setting. Of course, he didn't expect Luthor to let slip anything about his secret projects, the ones carefully hidden away on the books under innocuous research or development budgets. Luthor may have been slightly crazy, and very obsessed with Superman, but he wasn't careless. This was an uncharacteristic slip of the mask.

Luthor carried on. It wasn't anything that Bruce couldn't have predicted. "... a small allocation of funds ... benefits for humankind ..." etc. One of the non-executive directors raised her hand.

"I'm not comfortable with the idea of spying on Superman, and if it ever gets out, the publicity would play badly for us."

Luthor sighed loudly. "It's not spying, it's investigating. Very quiet investigating."

Bruce leaned back in his chair, raising his own hand. "I dunno, Lex." He gave an exaggerated shrug. "Superman seems like a decent guy. Why don't you ask him for a blood sample?"

There were some chuckles around the table. Luthor rolled his eyes. "Thank you for your contribution, Mr. Wayne. Invaluable, as always."

Bruce grinned ostentatiously, and went back to reading his emails. The meeting concluded without board approval for Luthor's proposal, although Bruce expected that Luthor would find a way to get the money to go where he wanted anyway. In practical terms, his control over the company was near absolute.

On the jet back to Gotham, Bruce relaxed into his seat. Keeping up his public facade was tiring, and he was glad he only ever had to do it for a few hours at a time. He dismissed the two stewardesses, and retreated into his thoughts.

Luthor was right, of course. Clark didn't make sense. Bruce had known him for a less than a year and had been observing him for not very much longer. Clark wasn't inclined to volunteer information about himself, but he had once said in a TV interview that he came from another planet, landed on Earth as a baby, and grew up on a farm as a normal kid. On the face of it, this wasn't completely impossible. But even allowing for exotic alien biology, how would an organism have evolved the ability to emit lasers from its eyes? And that was just the start – one time Bruce had seen Clark inhale a cloud of toxic gas and then fly up into space to release it. Clark had an impressively large chest, but the sheer volume of air inhaled was several orders of magnitude greater than an optimistic estimate of his lung capacity. Not to mention that the flying itself was inexplicable. Diana could leap to great heights, and Victor had jump jets built into his metal legs, but Clark just hovered. No noise, no downwash, no apparent muscle activity of any kind.

Bruce looked out of the cabin window at the wing of the plane, and then at the clouds moving slowly below, as he allowed himself a moment of whimsy. Were there tiny propellers in the feet of Clark's costume? A flicker of a smile crossed Bruce's face. He was certain that the Super-suit had nothing to do with Clark's abilities, but on the other hand, maybe there were... invisible bumble-bee wings on his cape? The smile grew fractionally more.

The plane's intercom crackled. "Mr. Wayne, we're beginning our descent. ETA is 20 minutes."

Bruce looked out at the clouds again. If Luthor was now actively investigating Clark, it was because he wanted to know how to neutralize him. Being able to stop Clark if he went rogue was common sense. Bruce himself had been thinking about how to do that for some time, but Luthor would take it one step further, and kill or disable Clark immediately if he could. For the time being, Clark was too valuable an ally, and the only way to stop Luthor would be to develop a countermeasure to whatever he found. The first step to that would be to understand Clark.

Bruce sighed, and started preparing himself for a difficult conversation at the next team meeting.

* * *

_THWUP _

The characteristic sound of a speedster coming to a stop heralded Barry Allen's appearance in the subterranean cave where Bruce had his secret workshop, and where he held team meetings. The cave was connected to Bruce's mansion via a cellar staircase, but the main cave exit was out in the grounds, allowing for discreet excursions, and in this case, private visitors.

Bruce had always cultivated a network of allies, but usually kept them separate from each other. The idea of explicitly forming a team had come to him after seeing the first news reports about Superman. It was, ironically, the fact that Superman was the least likely person on Earth to need a team that had prompted the line of thought that led, eventually, to Bruce reaching out to him a few months later. Lone agents would never be as effective as a group that could pool their resources, and Bruce certainly didn't want to ever end up in a situation where he was pitted against Superman. Befriending Clark and keeping him close was the best way forward, and once Clark was on board the others quickly followed.

As the only team member not ferried to the meetings by Clark, Barry was often late. The conversation paused.

"Sorry guys, I had a... there was um..." Barry grinned apologetically. "Yeah, I know, sorry."

Diana resumed talking, "Why not wait for Luthor to make his move – then we take him down?"

"There won't necessarily be a move as such," said Bruce. "Maybe we'll just wake up one day, and Clark, well, he won't."

"I'm pretty sure that Supes doesn't sleep," said Barry, grinning at Clark. "But does anyone mind filling me in?"

Diana answered first. "Bruce thinks that Luthor is going to find a way to hurt Clark, and wants to stop him."

"Sounds sensible," said Barry.

"Yes, but Bruce wants to experiment on Clark, like some kind of lab rat."

"Okay...?"

So far, the meeting was going as Bruce had expected. Barry was a scientist, so wouldn't see any problem with an investigation into Clark's powers. Diana was a rebellious warrior by nature and would object to the indignity of it. Victor could have gone either way, depending on whether his scientific curiosity won out over his resentment at being experimented on by his father, but he had a prior engagement and had declined to attend the meeting. Ultimately their opinions didn't matter, since it would be up to Clark, but one of the principles of the team was that they would always discuss things openly, and Bruce didn't want anyone to feel that he was going behind their back.

Diana seemed to be on the verge of throwing something at Barry, when Clark spoke. As ever, his deep voice managed to sound both soft and loud at the same time.

"Thank you for your concern, Diana, but I think Bruce has a point."

"Fine. If you want to go under the microphone, then do it, but I'm not going to be next."

Diana's grasp of modern technology didn't always match her grasp of battle tactics, but nobody in the cave was going to correct her.

Bruce slowly nodded. "Actually, a microscope isn't a bad place to start."

* * *

After returning Diana to her office, Clark reappeared in the cave. Bruce had asked Barry to stay, since his professional skill set could be useful. With quiet amusement, Clark put his upturned finger under the microscope, and watched as Bruce peered down the lens and adjusted it.

"Strange." Bruce motioned Barry over.

Barry looked down the microscope. "Woah... " Barry moved Clark's finger slightly, and took another look. "There are no cells."

Clark let Barry turn his hand over, and Barry examined a fingernail. "No keratin layers. And the surface is completely opaque." He sat up, and grinned. "I'm afraid to say, Mr. Kent, that you're not human."

Clark smiled briefly. Then Barry looked into the microscope again, and adjusted the lens. "Your hairs are... they're not made of hair. They're just colored tubes. At least on the surface – maybe we could pull one out and then take a closer look. Would you mind?"

Clark shrugged.

"I'd need tweezers," Barry looked around the cave, then grinned. "Or more likely pliers."

"There are some in the toolbox on that workbench." Bruce had barely started to point, when there was a _THWUP_, and Barry was back at the microscope holding a pair of large pliers.

"Let's see..." he used the pliers to take hold of one of Clark's finger hairs, and then yanked upwards. "I don't think I got it." he said, after examining the pliers. He tried again, this time pulling slowly on the hair first, to make sure of his grip.

"Ow," said Clark.

"Ow? Haha, you're kidding, right?"

"No."

Barry yanked upwards, but again found nothing in the pliers afterwards.

"Firstly," said Barry, "I'd like it on record that I made Superman say 'ow'. Secondly, this is weird, look, when I pull slowly, the skin rises up with the hair, but if I pull fast, it doesn't." He poked a finger at a fleshy part of Clark's hand, and they watched as it gave way normally, then Barry prodded harder, then harder still.

"Ow!" This time it was Barry who said it, rubbing his finger. "It's like, the harder you hit or pull the skin, the stiffer it gets."

"Makes sense," said Bruce. It explained why Clark seemed so human when you shook his hand, and yet he could punch through concrete walls with that same hand. Perhaps his skin contained tiny pockets of shear-thickening fluid, like the liquid body armor compound that Bruce had recently incorporated into his own outfits. Bruce looked closely at the cuffs of Clark's shirt, and then the collar.

"How often do you wash your shirts?"

"I don't, unless something spills on them. Otherwise there's no need."

"They look clean. This is good, it should mean that Luthor won't be able to get a sample of your DNA, or equivalent, from any place you've been."

"Score one for us!" said Barry. "High five!" He held up his open palm to Clark, who gently high fived it, and then to Bruce, who ignored him. If Clark really was an alien then there was no reason that his biology should resemble a human's. Maybe he shed his skin whole like a snake, or kept the same outside layer forever, like a tree.

"Okay," said Barry, "if there's no proper skin or hair to look at, um... no offense Clark, then I'm not sure how much more help I could be."

"Thanks anyway, Barry." said Clark.

"Yes, thank you." said Bruce. "Clark, I'd like to ask you some personal questions, if I may."

"See you around, guys!" said Barry. There was a short _THWUP_, then Barry's voice came from halfway out of the cave. "One of these days I'm gonna get that high five, Bats!"

* * *

After about half an hour of questions, Clark had finally started to look irritated, so Bruce had ended the conversation and let him leave. Not that Clark needed permission to leave, but he was extremely polite and wouldn't have left without it. Bruce thought back over what he had learned during the preceding 30 minutes, and typed up the key points for later reference.

Clark's parents had told him that they found him in a crashed spaceship, and adopted him as their own on their small farm in rural Kansas. The spaceship was non-functional, and was initially left buried in the ground, but a few years ago Clark had dug it up and hidden it in Antarctica, just to be safe. As a child, he had seemed quite ordinary, had gone to school as normal and was subject to the usual trials and difficulties faced by children. He was teased by the meaner kids, but made some friends and was well-liked by the teachers. He had tried sports, and done reasonably well, but not exceptionally, since he was neither physically imposing nor particularly driven. This part had surprised Bruce, but Clark remained firm in his description of his younger self as being "Honestly kind of a dweeb."

Things changed after puberty. The way Clark had described it, he just kept growing, until he reached his current height and weight aged around 22. He had never worked out nor taken care over his diet – it simply happened. In fact, he didn't need to eat at all, and mainly did so to fit in at social events. His powers started manifesting at age 17, although Clark had discovered each one by accident, so he wasn't necessarily sure when they had actually become available to him. Fortunately most of the early discoveries occurred while he still lived on the farm, so only his parents had witnessed him casually throwing hay bales around as if they were made of cotton candy, or running to close an open gate and accidentally breaking the sound barrier.

His first laser-vision had nearly killed someone, when a bar fight that Clark witnessed had escalated to threats of gun violence. Clark described feeling an intense rage at the injustice unfolding, and staring intently at the perpetrator's weapon. He had activated his super-speed and was going to use it to prevent any gunshot from causing harm. But instead his field of view turned red and, from his slow-motion perspective, the gun started falling to the ground. Then, one by one, everyone's eyes slowly started turning towards him. Clark had run out of the bar before they could properly see him.

A short beep from Bruce's computer indicated that his initial background checks on Mr. and Mrs. Kent were complete. The results showed nothing untoward – the two of them appeared to be normal well-meaning Americans with no connections to any government or shady institution. Bruce's starting theory was that Clark was merely an augmented human of some kind. This seemed more likely than being from an alien species that just happened to look identical to Homo sapiens. An investigation into Clark's parents was the logical first step.

Of course, records were spottier back when Clark was a baby. If his parents had stolen him from a research center and adopted new identities, they would have gone off the grid before most modern databases were created. And assuming they knew how Clark would later develop, they would have had plenty of time to construct a "non-functional spaceship" to show to him when he grew older. If they themselves were able to activate his powers one by one, the timetable of discovery also made sense. A much younger child with super strength would be impossible to discipline and would most likely grow up as a selfish bully who had never been made to eat his vegetables, rather than the calm and obliging Clark.

Bruce typed out a quick email to the head of the WayneTech Science Library, asking her to compile a list of known secret science programs that had taken place since the Manhattan project. Then, after a moment's reflection, he sent another email, to the editor of the Wayne Enterprises Friends & Family newsletter, suggesting an article about science myths and legends. Bruce had found that most of his covert investigations only required a single level of misdirection.

That line of inquiry would take some time to explore. In the meantime, Bruce turned his attention to a more immediate analysis. Clark had agreed to undergo further testing, with a researcher of Bruce's choice. It wouldn't take long to compile a shortlist and finalize the candidates.


	2. Science brought to bear

_THWUP_

Ray Palmer blinked with surprise from behind his desk. It had been a normal Tuesday evening, and now Superman was standing in his university office. Another man who Ray didn't recognize had arrived at the same time. The man was dressed in jeans and a loose jacket, and wore sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. His short beard was sprinkled with flecks of gray. He had a slight slouch in his shoulders and curve in his back that suggested many years of hard work. Ray would have guessed he was in his late fifties.

"Hello, Dr. Palmer," said Superman. "Sorry to burst in on you like this, but we would like your help with something."

Ray stood up. "I... yes... of course... I mean... wow... help from me?"

"Yes. We'd like to keep this quiet, but we have reason to believe we can trust you." Superman glanced at the older man, who nodded. Scans of Palmer's office hadn't revealed anything untoward, background checks on Palmer had come back clean, and WayneTech had previously offered Palmer a position at nearly double his current salary, which he had refused in order to continue his particle physics research.

"You also have the right skills and resources," said Superman, "We want you to investigate something."

"Okay, sure, what kind of thing?"

"Me."

"Oh... wow, uh... you know I'm not a biologist."

"We're quite sure you're suited for the job."

Ray smiled nervously. "Actually, ever since you... uh... appeared here on Earth... I have been wondering a few things. Like how do you-"

The older man moved swiftly forward, with his arm outstretched. Ray froze in alarm.

"What we know so far is on this." The man spoke with a growl and a faint southern accent.

Ray looked down and saw that the man was holding out a USB stick. He relaxed, a little. The man continued, "Whatever you find out, copy it to this, and then delete the original files from your own computer. There is also a secure messaging app on here that you can use to contact us. Run it directly from the stick."

Ray reached out and gingerly took hold of the USB device, but the man didn't let go. Ray laughed nervously.

"Dr. Palmer," said Superman, "You don't have to do this if you aren't comfortable with it. We won't force you."

"Yes, I know... I mean... you're ... you know..." Ray tried tugging lightly on the USB stick, but the older man still held onto it firmly.

"We expect you'll need a few days to plan some tests and reserve the equipment," said the older man. "Let us know when you're ready."

"Yeah, great. I'll uh... next week I should have some time to..."

The older man's head turned slightly. "Someone's coming."

"I heard them too," said Superman.

The older man leaned forward. He seemed fairly well built under his clothes, and there was an air of authority about him. "Dr. Palmer, we would prefer if nobody else knew about any of this." He spoke slowly. "Any of it." Then he let go of the USB stick and stepped back.

"Of course. I... uh... "

Superman put his arm around the older man's shoulders. "Thank you for your time, Dr. Palmer."

"Sure, no problem. And you can-"

_THWUP_

"-call me Ray."

There was a knock at the door. It took a few moments before Ray remembered that he was supposed to say "Come in."

* * *

It had been three weeks since Ray Palmer had run his first set of tests on Clark. Bruce had been there to observe, in his standard "gruff older man" disguise. Over the years he had developed a variety of personas, the most famous being Bruce Wayne the playboy, who was on display for everyone to see.

The second most famous was the black-clad instrument of fear which he used to intimidate denizens of the criminal underworld, and which had gained the nickname "Batman" in the press. That persona was not on display at all. Bruce kept it for specific missions at night, when he could stay in the shadows and avoid being seen directly, since too much visibility would spoil the effect.

When he was on reconnaissance and not expecting to engage with anyone, he wore a much more practical outfit, with body armor and various gadgets in case he ran into trouble, all concealed under a gray hoodie so that he could blend into a crowd if necessary. This wasn't a persona as such, so he had to be careful not to show too much of his face to anyone that might recognize him.

The other members of the team were inclined to use "Batman" as Bruce's codename, though he always felt that this was missing the point, since Batman was supposed to be mysterious and unknown. As far as Bruce was concerned, Batman wasn't his identity, it was just one of the many tools in his arsenal. He preferred the name "Overseer" for his persona when he was coordinating or strategizing, or when he didn't want people to connect him to Batman.

"Gruff older man" was perhaps his favorite public persona, since it was easy to apply the nose and beard, only required subtle changes in voice and bearing, and allowed him to roam freely and anonymously. He often used it in situations similar to meeting Palmer.

In the event, Palmer's initial tests had been disappointing. His attempts at spectral analysis and crystallography had failed because light didn't interact with Clark in any way that allowed structure to be discerned. Nothing seemed capable of cutting Clark's hairs, even his own laser-vision hadn't worked, and taking a skin sample was futile. Ray didn't have access to an MRI, CT, or DEXA scanner, and asking to borrow one would have raised too many questions. An electron microscope might have shown something, Ray had said, but first he would have to build one large enough to put Clark into, and he couldn't do that without substantial help.

Bruce was starting to wonder whether Palmer had lost interest, since he hadn't communicated or copied anything new to the USB stick. Security footage showed him going to and from work as usual, so he hadn't been compromised by Luthor, as far as Bruce could tell. Bruce wondered if he should start looking at alternatives to Palmer.

A day later, Bruce's secure message app pinged.

_Ray Palmer (1 unread)_

Bruce glanced at his phone. He was at a Gotham Investment Partners function. One of his personal rules was to keep the two sides of his life strictly separate, and for now he was firmly in playboy philanthropist mode. He wasn't going to read the message until after the event, but knowing it was there wouldn't make the evening any easier to endure.

_PING_

_Ray Palmer (2 unread)_

A glossy woman in high heels was trying to talk to him about opportunities in West Africa, while a man wearing loafers and too much cologne hovered nearby, clearly hoping to get her attention. Bruce considered making an excuse and leaving, but there were only so many times he could bow out of events without raising questions, and this wasn't an emergency... probably.

_PING_

_Ray Palmer (3 unread)_

The evening dragged on. Speeches were interspersed with rounds of canapés and champagne, and bouts of fending off advances from people who saw him as a potential future meal-ticket. Over the years, Bruce had cultivated the art of seeming interested without committing to anything, and he could practically run on autopilot through this type of gathering.

Eventually, the speeches finished, and other people started leaving. Bruce headed outside, and once safely in his car, he brought up the messaging app.

**_Ray Palmer: _**Hello?

**_Ray Palmer: _**I've found something. I think it could be important.

**_Ray Palmer: _**I could try to explain on here, but I'm not even sure what it means. I'll wait for you to get in touch.

_(Ray Palmer logged off) _

Maybe his concerns over Palmer were unwarranted. Bruce quickly typed out a message to Clark.

**_Overseer: _**Palmer wants to see us again. Let me know when you're available.

Then he leaned back and closed his eyes – there would be time for a nap before the car reached home.

* * *

_THWUP_

Ray Palmer jumped up out of his chair. Superman and his older associate had appeared in his office again, although this time it was less of a surprise.

"Hi, good to see you both."

"You said you found something," said the older man.

"Yes, indeed. So, after you left last time, I started thinking about a different way to attack the problem." Ray glanced at Superman. "Um... I didn't mean that you're a problem, as such... ah..."

"It's okay, Dr. Palmer," said Superman. "Please carry on."

"Right, yes, so instead of analyzing your structure, I thought I'd look at the energy that you give off, so I started putting together a device to scan various electromagnetic frequencies in preparation for our next session, but I found I couldn't calibrate it correctly – there were these anomalous spikes in the readings, which I hadn't ever seen before."

Ray paused for breath.

"Now, as you may know, my specialty is nano-technology, so I already had something to scan at a small scale, and I made a few adjustments to that, and, well, it took a couple of weeks to isolate the frequencies, and then tune the device, and I had to take into account the sympathetic oscillation that was interfering with some of the measurements."

Ray paused for breath again, and held up a bulky detector with lots of wires coming in and out of it, plugged into a laptop on his desk.

"Anyway, I got it working, and it showed that there are all these tiny emitters blinking about in the room."

He switched on the device, and the laptop showed occasional white pixels, blinking from place to place on the screen.

There was silence in the room, while the three of them looked at the computer.

"This doesn't seem very relevant," said the older man.

"Ah, yes, I thought that too, but there's more. See, I took it outside a few times, because I was trying to get more data on the emitters, and, well, a couple of days ago I briefly saw a much stronger signal moving about, and I didn't make the connection at first, but then in the evening on the news they reported about that collision in the Atlantic. And, of course, I still didn't make the connection, but then yesterday it occurred to me, and... well..."

Ray took a deep breath, and then slowly rotated the detector around to face Superman. The laptop screen lit up with thousands of dots swarming around, in the shape of a humanoid figure.

"Yes!" Ray said excitedly. "I was right! It was you!"

There was silence in the room again, as a multitude of questions sprang into Bruce's mind. Were these things part of Clark, or were they a foreign agent? Were they organic, or artificial? Were they connected to his super-powers? Why had nobody detected them before?

"Huh, the energy signatures coming from these ones seem to be different." Ray put down the detector and started scrolling though settings on his laptop. "I'll see if I can pinpoint the wavelengths."

For a while there was no sound in the room, except for Ray's occasional key presses.

"Okay, let's try this." Ray briefly held up the detector again, in Superman's direction, then shook his head and went back to working on the laptop.

Bruce looked at Clark. There was a look of discomfort on his face. Bruce hadn't ever seen him looking like this before. Palmer's impersonal scientific analysis must have been triggering something that he hadn't felt for a long time – vulnerability. Clark had spent nearly his whole life trying to fit in, and now his differences were being carefully inspected and revealed. While he had initially agreed to it, perhaps he wasn't expecting to be found quite so... alien. Although ironically, fear of the unknown was an innately human trait.

"All right, I think that's enough for today." Bruce turned to Superman. "Let's go."

"Oh, okay," said Superman, regaining some of his composure. "Thank you for your work, Dr. Palmer."

"You're welcome," said Ray. "Uh... did I do something wro-"

_THWUP_

Ray looked around his empty office, and at his detection device, wondering if he had screwed up.

* * *

Back in the cave, Bruce had barely orientated himself after Clark dropped out of super-speed, when Clark began speaking.

"I can't see them."

Clark sounded agitated as he held out his hands in front of himself, and stared intently. "I was trying in Ray's lab earlier. I should be able to see them. I can see individual specks of dust if I zoom in, and sweep through infrared or ultraviolet, but I've never seen Ray's little dots before. What _are_ they?"

Bruce took off his hat and sunglasses, and started removing the fake nose and beard. He wasn't sure what to say to reassure his friend. "They are very small. Maybe you just haven't noticed one yet."

"They were all over me!"

"Clark, they are clearly benign."

Clark sighed. "Maybe. I'm just not used to... not being able to see things."

"We can pause the investigation into you, though I wouldn't recommend shelving it completely. If we want to stay ahead of Luth-"

"Of Luthor, yes, I know." Clark sighed again. "Thanks, Bruce. I appreciate that you're trying to help."

"Of course."

"I guess I'll sleep on it. I'm going to head back to Metropolis now."

"Let me know what you decide."

"I will."

_THWUP_

Later that evening, Bruce's secure message app pinged. He had left the USB stick with Palmer deliberately, hoping that he would be in contact.

**_Ray Palmer: _**Hello?

**_Ray Palmer: _**Just wondering if I should carry on.

_**Overseer:** _Dr. Palmer, thanks for getting in touch.

_**Overseer:** _I think that Superman was starting to feel a little uncomfortable, which is why I ended things so abruptly.

_**Overseer:** _Obviously, I don't want to put him, or you, in an awkward position.

**_Ray Palmer: _**I understand.

_**Overseer:** _However, if these emitters that you found are everywhere around us, including in your own office, I see no reason why you shouldn't continue to investigate them separately, if you wish.

_**Overseer:** _And of course I would appreciate if you could keep me informed.

**_Ray Palmer: _**Ah, yes, I can do that. I'll let you know what I find out.

**_Ray Palmer: _**Bye.

_(Ray Palmer logged off) _

Bruce leaned back in his chair. The situation was needing more finesse than he had expected. Hopefully Palmer would be able to make progress without needing to involve Clark directly.


	3. Methodical progress

The next two months were fairly quiet on the analysis front. A series of landslides in East Asia and an earthquake in South America kept Superman busy, while Bruce investigated the source of a re-ignited turf war between the Maroni and Falcone crime families in Gotham.

So it was a while later when, on a Thursday evening, Ray Palmer sat in his office, expecting another _THWUP_ at any moment. However, there was merely a knock on his door, followed by the entrance of Superman's older associate, wearing his usual cap and sunglasses.

"Hello, Dr. Palmer."

"Uh, hi." Ray stood up, he had been expecting something more… super.

"You wanted to show me something."

"Right, yes." Ray beckoned to a worktop, where he had constructed a square metal cage, half a meter in width, with a funnel underneath leading down to a much smaller box. The entire contraption sprouted bundles of wires that lead to various electronic circuit boards and power supplies, and it was connected to the same laptop as Ray's previous detection device.

"I've been working on catching one of the emitters, so we can study it further. The detector only picks them up as occasional blinks, so first I tried using a box to trap one after I'd seen the blink, but that didn't work. I think that they are actually moving about all the time really fast, and occasionally stopping, and that's when the detector picks them up as a blink. So then I tried to come up with a way to disable one."

Ray gestured at the metal cage. "This device waits until one of the emitters enters the cage, then it zaps it with an EMP blast, so that it falls down into the detector. It took me a while to get it working reliably, but, well, I can show you." Ray smiled broadly, and flipped a switch on the side of the box. An audible hum started.

"It's charging up ready for the discharge," said Ray.

The two men stood watching the device.

"There's usually one every few minutes," said Ray.

"So you think the emitters are electronic devices?"

"Ah, well, the static shock would potentially disable anything, I guess, as long as it used normal... uh... Earth-like chemistry."

A few more seconds went by, then there was a bright flash and a loud crackle of electricity, as a burst of lightning shot around inside the metal cage. Bruce reflexively took a step backwards.

"Yeah, that takes some getting used to," said Ray. "Anyway, there should be one of the emitters down in the detector now."

He sighed. "However, this is where I run into a problem. Basically, the damn thing is too slippery. As soon as it wakes up, it doesn't stay in the box. Like, it can tunnel right out of there. I tried dropping it into water, but that didn't make any difference. Eventually, I did find that a lead-lined box will keep it trapped, but I can't really do any analysis when it's enclosed in lead, and as soon as I open the box, it's gone."

"How do you know it's in there at all?"

"Right." Ray smiled. "I wasn't sure at first, of course, but the thing is – there's nearly always a blink coming from just on top of the landing plate inside the box, a few seconds after the discharge. I'm pretty sure it's the emitter waking up again."

"You're pretty sure?"

"It's my best guess at the moment. I did set up a high-res camera pointed at the center of the landing plate via a magnifier, and one time it captured this." Ray clicked on a file on his laptop, and a video of a gray metal surface appeared, with a dark blob a few pixels wide in one corner. It was stationary for about a second, then there was some small movement, followed by a single frame blur as it sped out of view.

"That was the only time I was able to catch anything." Ray scratched his head. "Look, I was thinking, what I really need is someone with... uh... super-speed... to maneuver some probes in there at a micro scale to pin it down." Ray paused. "But I guess Superman might not want to help."

"Maybe not, but there is someone else we can ask."

* * *

_THWUP_

Ray Palmer was starting to get used to the sound of superheroes arriving in his office, but this time there was a new face along with the bearded older man. Or rather, a new mask. The Flash bounded forward and held out his hand.

"Raymond Palmer! This is so awesome. You're, like, really famous."

"Thanks. Uh... and so are you."

"Yeah, but you're properly famous. Like, I read some of your papers in college, and now I'm shaking hands with THE Raymond Palmer."

"Please, call me Ray."

The Flash turned to the older man, and grinned. "Guess what? I'm on first name terms with Ray!"

The older man grimaced.

"Right, yeah." The Flash turned back to Ray and mock whispered, "That guy is all business, all the time." He looked around the room and spotted Ray's metal contraption. "Is that the capturing device for the mysterious emitters?"

"Yes. I've added a microscope with micro-manipulators that can be slotted into place after the emitter lands in the analysis box. Hopefully you'll be able to locate it and then secure it in time."

The Flash leaned over the microscope and tweaked the manipulator dials. "Yep, I've used something like this before. Should be able to make it work." He stood back up. "Let's do this!"

"Okay," said Ray. "After I turn it on, at some point there will be an electrostatic discharge inside the cage. The emitter will take a couple of seconds to fall down the funnel, so no need to look immediately. On average it blinks out around 3.4 seconds after the discharge."

"3.4 seconds?" said the Flash, "It must be really dense to fall down that quickly."

"Yes, frankly I was surprised that it was this easy to collect. Anyway, turning on now." Ray switched on the device.

"So cool," said the Flash quietly, as an electrical hum filled the room.

They waited.

"This is the tedious bit," said Ray, apologetically.

"No worries," said the Flash.

A few moments later, a loud blast of lightning reverberated around the cage.

"One thousand... two thousand... over to you." said Ray.

The Flash grinned and gave a thumbs up, then there was a quiet _THWUP_, and the Flash was at the microscope. There was a pause, while his hands moved rapidly, then he looked up and gave a thumbs up. "Done!"

"You got it?" said Ray.

"Yep. Take a look." The Flash stepped aside, and Ray moved over and looked down the microscope.

"Uh... it's not there."

"What? I definitely attached the grippy thing to one of its wings."

"It has wings?"

"It has bits sticking out of it. Some of them look like wings."

"Well, take a look – there's no emitter there now."

The Flash looked down the microscope. "Huh, yeah. Maybe I didn't get it tight enough."

"I'll set up the camera to record, at least we should be able to get a detailed view of it, even if it blinks out later." Ray moved some equipment around, and then reset the capture device.

A short while later, there was another loud crackle from within the cage, another _THWUP_, and another thumbs up pose from the Flash. Ray looked down the microscope again.

"Still nothing."

"Whaaaat? I definitely got it that time."

"Let's check the recording."

Ray's laptop showed the view through the microscope as the Flash searched back and forth over the landing plate looking for a dark spot. Even though the video was recorded at high-speed, and normal movement would be seen in slow motion, the Flash's adjustments still appeared super-humanly fast. After a few seconds the video showed him finding the emitter, and zooming in until it was clearly visible – a round metallic sphere, with thin probes emerging from several directions, and a pair of what looked like pincers, as well as four square wing-like appendages. Then, after a long pause, the video showed manipulator arms with grips on the end rotating into view, and being adjusted to grab hold of two opposing wings. The grips briefly tweaked the emitter back and forth.

"See? I made sure it was secure," said the Flash.

The video still had several minutes of footage to go. Ray fast-forwarded, until the emitter disappeared. Then he went back and played the video from just before that point. It showed the emitter starting to move, strain against the grips, and then become blurry, before blinking off screen at high speed.

"Woah," said the Flash. "Did it just vibrate itself free?"

"Seems so," said Ray. "It looks mechanical though, maybe if we pass some high voltage AC through the grips, it would keep it paralyzed."

"Oh, like a taser? Nice!"

Ray walked over to another worktop and rummaged through pieces of equipment. "I've got a step-up transformer somewhere here." He kept looking, then did a double-take at a device with a fast-blinking LED on the top. "Huh." he said. Then paused, and looked at the Flash. "No way."

"What's up?"

"I've just got to check something." Ray ran back to his metal cage, and started unscrewing the detector from its cradle underneath. "One sec..." He nearly dropped the screwdriver in his excitement, but managed to free the detector. He turned to the laptop where it was plugged in, and opened up the scanning program he had first used with Superman. The laptop screen showed occasional blinking pixels, as the detector picked up emitter appearances in the room. Then Ray picked up the detector and rotated it around to face the Flash, whereupon the laptop screen showed hundreds of blinking dots all over him.

"They're on you too!" said Ray. "Just like Superman. Although there aren't as many, and the energy signature is more like the ones in the room."

There was a loud clatter from a nearby table. Bruce had been leaning back against it while observing, and had now stood up so quickly that a lamp had fallen over. Ray and the Flash turned to look at him. They had almost forgotten he was there as they were so caught up in their experiments.

Internally. Bruce was kicking himself. How could he have overlooked something so obvious? There had been no mention of speedsters in all of human history, and then a matter of months after a super-powered self-declared alien appeared on the scene, Barry gained super-speed. A connection between Superman and the Flash was the first thing he should have thought of. It was clear that Barry's powers must have something to do with the emitters, which appeared to have a kind of speed ability of their own. Since the emitters looked mechanical in nature, this greatly lessened the probability of Clark's parents being connected with his super-powered origin, since that level of nano-technology wasn't available when he was young. It wasn't even available now.

Bruce noticed that the other two were still looking in his direction. "Please continue," he said, in his gruff old man voice, while setting the lamp upright again. "This is an interesting discovery, but our priority should still be to immobilize one of the emitters for further study."

"Right, yes, of course." Ray resumed his search for a step-up transformer, and after finding one, hurriedly attached it to the manipulator grips. After another repeat of the Flash's thumbs-up capture procedure, Ray looked up triumphantly from the microscope. "It's still there, I think we got it this time."

"Cool," said the Flash, although some of his previous exuberance had gone.

"Good work, both of you," said Bruce. "Dr. Palmer, I trust you can now continue your analysis without our help. Although if you need the Flash to help you catch any more emitters then let me know."

"Yes, of course," said Ray.

"Yeah, any time Doc," said the Flash. "This has been really fun, like being back in college."

"I look forward to seeing what you can find out." said Bruce. He looked at the Flash and motioned to the door.

"Bye Ray!" said the Flash, and with a _THWUP_ the two of them were gone, leaving Ray to think about how he was going to analyze the emitter while keeping high voltage AC passing through it.

* * *

As soon as they were in the car heading back to Wayne Manor, Bruce spoke.

"Barry, I'd like to ask you some personal questions, if I may." The question didn't come as much of a surprise to Barry.

There was a quiet _THWUP_ as he instantaneously changed back into his non-super clothes. "Sure, fire away."

"How did you get your super-speed?"

"Yeah, the big question. Okay. So, I was working in the forensics lab one evening, and there was a thunderstorm going on outside, and I assume some lightning must have struck the building because there was a loud bang and flash of light in the room, which knocked me down. I didn't think much of it at the time, but later that evening I was in a hurry to catch the bus, and I guess the speed activated because suddenly I was at the bus already."

Bruce nodded. This matched Clark's description of accidentally discovering his powers one by one as he needed them. Perhaps the blast of lightning affected a group of emitters that happened to be nearby, in a similar way to the electrostatic shocks given by Palmer's device. Then when the emitters restarted they latched onto Barry for some reason. The question then was – why did they give him super-speed and not any of Clark's other powers?

"Have you ever tried to fly?"

Barry laughed. "You mean like Supes?"

"Yes."

"No. Do you think I can?"

"Maybe."

"Ooh, do you think I can shoot lasers out of my eyes?" Barry looked out at a passing signpost, and squinted. "Hnnng!"

"If you do have that ability, I think it will only activate when you are angry about something."

"Right, I'll bear that in mind for the next time someone cuts in line at the cafeteria."

Given that Clark had discovered all his own powers over a short timescale, chances were that Barry didn't have any abilities that he was unaware of. Bruce moved on to his next question.

"What's it like when you move at super-speed?"

"Honestly? I don't know."

Bruce raised an eyebrow, and Barry laughed. "Okay, I'll explain. This is going to sound weird though." He took a deep breath.

"So… I'm not actually in control of anything when I trigger the speed. What I do is I imagine what I want to do, and then, somehow, my body moves at super speed, and does it. So like, right now, if I wanted to put my costume back on, I visualize getting it out of my backpack and taking off my regular shirt, and putting my right arm into the costume, and then my left, and so on, and then… " _THWUP. _Barry appeared in his Flash costume. "That happened just as quick for me as it did for you." There was another _THWUP_ and Barry was back in his regular clothes.

"So you can't change what you're doing part way through?"

"I can if I'm quick enough, or rather going slow enough." Barry laughed again. "What I mean is like, if I was going to run a very long distance, then it might take long enough that I can still be in the middle of doing it and then change my mind. Like mid-way across the Atlantic on the way to London… oh, I think I'll go to Paris instead... and then I'm in Paris."

"But you said you have to visualize each step in the process beforehand."

"Not literally every step. But it has to be something I can visualize, like running to Paris. But since I've never been to Paris I'd end up somewhere random in the city, since I would visualize running to France until I saw signs that said 'Paris' and then following those. But I don't know any specific street names in advance."

"How could you find the emitter in Ray's lab before you knew what it looked like?"

"I do things like that in stages. I could visualize using the microscope to scan the surface until I found something that stood out, and zooming in on it. Then I activate the speed… boom, now I'm looking at something down the microscope, and I can see it's got bits sticking out, so I can visualize moving the gripper arms to grab hold of it. Activate speed again... and done."

"So the speed doesn't have any knowledge that you don't."

"No, right, I can't use it as a shortcut for anything that I don't already know how to do. One time I tried to visualize writing something out in Japanese, and I don't know Japanese, so what came out was just some random squiggles on the paper. Another time I tried to draw a perpetual motion machine, and the speed wouldn't activate at all. I don't think I was visualizing anything coherent enough."

"Interesting." Bruce considered the new information. It made sense that Barry, being an ordinary human being, couldn't perceive time faster than normal, but it didn't match with Clark's description of time slowing down when he activated his super-speed. Maybe the emitters were limited in their manipulation of human biology. On the other hand, in order to accurately interpret Barry's visualizations and turn them into a series of physical movements, the emitters, or something else, had to contain some sophisticated predictive modelling, plus a mechanism for moving Barry's limbs at great speed.

Something didn't quite fit though. Bruce remembered during his initial research on Barry he had read a description of him taking on some armed criminals.

"If you have to visualize everything beforehand, how do you dodge bullets that move faster than you can think?"

"Oh, yeah, that's another thing. The speed has some kind of protective feature. It moves me out of the way of danger by itself. So I don't have to think about that. I'm not sure exactly how far reaching it is though. I don't really want to test it too much, if you know what I mean."

"Of course." Bruce started to mentally enumerate possibilities for what could be monitoring Barry and moving him out of the way of danger. Was it actually Barry himself, acting subconsciously? He needed more information.

"Um…" Barry looked at him awkwardly. "Would you mind not telling the others about this? It's kind of lame that I'm not really in control of my super power."

Bruce frowned. "I can't promise that." He saw the pained expression on Barry's face. "But I won't say anything unless it's necessary."

"Thanks."

"In return, please don't mention anything about the emitters, I don't think we're at that stage yet."

"Sure."

The car continued on its journey, while Bruce continued to think. After a minute, Barry spoke again.

"Was there anything else you wanted to ask me?"

"No, I think that's all for now."

"Cool, I'll be on my way then." Barry put his backpack on.

"I'll stop the car."

"No, don't, I always wanted to try this." Barry grinned, then a slight look of concentration crossed his face. There was a _THWUP_, followed by the sound of a car door slamming shut, and he was gone.

* * *

Two weeks later, on a Thursday afternoon, Ray Palmer stood in the university parking garage, expecting another _THWUP_ at any moment. However, there were merely some quiet footsteps before a voice spoke behind him.

"Dr. Palmer."

Ray turned around to see a now familiar figure in a cap and sunglasses standing in the shadow of a pillar.

"Ah, hi." Ray held out a stack of five small metal boxes with both hands, slightly struggling due to the weight. "Here are the emitters."

The older man took the boxes, easily holding them up.

"These ones," said Ray, gesturing at the middle three in the stack, "are in normal boxes. All I had to do to keep the emitters restrained was use lead covered grips. Seemed rather simple in the end." He smiled sheepishly. "The emitter in the heavy box is not restrained, but the box is lead lined so it can't get out. I thought you might want it to compare, in case it behaves differently."

"Good thinking."

"And... this thing on top is a more portable version of the detector. So you can plug it into your own laptop and then see the emitters yourself."

"Nice work."

"Thanks. You know, the emitters are really amazing. I think they're nanobots of some kind. I'm pretty sure the wings are solar panels, and the stalks contain sensors – one of them looks like a spectrophotometer. Each emitter gives off far more energy than you would expect for its size. Also, I noticed that there's a pattern in the signals they're sending out. There must be a whole computer in each one, shrunk down to the size of an atom. You could probably analyze the signals to find out more, but I wouldn't even know where to start with that."

"I'll find someone to look into it."

"Great. Well, this has been, uh... you know, it was great working with you... " Ray paused, as if wrestling with an internal dilemma. Then he reached into his pocket and took out the USB stick that contained the messaging app. "I suppose you want this back."

The man took the stick and smiled slightly. Ray wouldn't have known that he had already wiped it remotely. "I admire your integrity. I'll let you know if we ever need similar analysis in the future."

"Yeah, that would be great, I mean, of course. So... bye then."

"Goodbye, Dr. Palmer." The man turned and walked towards the exit. Ray watched him for a while, expecting a _THWUP_, or a flash of smoke, or... something, but he merely reached a door of the garage and exited through it normally.

"Huh." Ray shook his head, and laughed. It had all been rather surreal. He wondered if he would ever be involved in anything as exciting again. Still, the emitters had given him some amazing new ideas to pursue in the field of nano-tech. He was looking forward to getting back to his research.


	4. Strange conclusions

**_Overseer:_** I have a puzzle for you, but we need to meet.

**_Oracle:_** fine

**_Oracle:_** 22:30 my place

**_Overseer:_** Good, see you there.

_(Oracle logged off) _

Bruce knew that Barbara Gordon didn't much like meeting face to face anymore. However, her mind was as sharp as ever and Bruce couldn't think of anyone more suited to investigating the computers contained inside each emitter. At the appointed time, he navigated through hidden tunnels until he reached Barbara's base of operations, hooked up to the power lines underneath a large factory.

"This better be good." Barbara turned her wheelchair around to face Bruce, and folded her arms.

"I need you to hack into a nanobot."

Barbara stared at him, and Bruce smiled inwardly at having rendered her temporarily speechless. It was not something that happened very often. Then he held out a small metal box.

"It's in here, held immobile by lead pincers, but it's still functional and emitting signals. Now it's over to you."

Barbara took the box and looked inside. It appeared empty, apart from some small gripper arms, but she didn't doubt anything Bruce had said.

"Where did it come from?"

"I'd rather not tell you yet. I don't want to prejudice your investigation."

"So what _can_ you tell me?"

"It can fly. It uses lots of energy. It has some kind of relocation ability. We think it's solar powered and includes a variety of sensors."

"Hmm... it'll take a while."

"I know. Keep me informed." Bruce turned to leave. As he reached the door, Barbara called out.

"Hey Bruce."

He turned back to look at her, and she smiled awkwardly. "Thanks."

Bruce paused. Was she thanking him for respecting her personal space, or for giving her something interesting to work on? It didn't really matter. He smiled back, before ducking out of the room into the tunnels beyond.

Three weeks later, while Bruce was in his cave watching a police interview video of one of Maroni's thugs, a series of quick-fire messages appeared.

**_Oracle:_** been looking at nanobot

**_Oracle:_** part of a distributed network

**_Oracle:_** peer 2 peer

**_Oracle:_** must be others around too

**_Oracle:_** cant determine traffic content tho

**_Oracle:_** encryption too strong

**_Oracle:_** prob used for spying or smth similar

**_Oracle:_** still looking

**_Overseer:_** Thanks. Great insights.

This tied in with Ray's observation that the emitters had external sensors. Maybe they were everywhere monitoring the whole planet. If he could tap into the network, he'd be able to see and hear what was happening anywhere in the world, like one of Clark's super-powers.

Wait... one of Clark's super-powers? Could these nanobots be the source of his x-ray vision and super-hearing? It made sense, sort of. It would explain why Clark couldn't see the nanobots – they likely edited themselves out of the picture, much like how the blind spot in a human eye is filtered out by the visual cortex. But for this to be the case, Clark would have to be linked into the nanobot network, and he had never mentioned anything like that. If it was the explanation then the nanobots must be operating on the level of his subconscious.

A few hours later another flurry of messages appeared.

**_Oracle:_** found one use of sensors

**_Oracle:_** used for commands on boot up

**_Oracle:_** e.g. presence of items 8 and 54 tells bot to reset some config

**_Oracle:_** not sure what items 8 and 54 are tho

**_Oracle:_** still looking

**_Overseer:_** Interesting.

Bruce leaned back in his chair. Changes to the nanobot's configuration? Perhaps this would turn out to be the key to disabling Clark's powers, if necessary. Of course, if that was the case, and in order to work it out all you needed to do was to study one of the emitters, then it was only a matter of time before...

Bruce's stomach went cold. He grabbed his communicator, and impatiently dialed Superman. There was no answer. For a moment his finger hovered over the emergency alert, but this didn't really count as an emergency. On the other hand... Bruce stood up and glanced around the cave. If his theory was right, then the nanobots would be scanning nearby. It was worth a try. He took a deep breath.

"CLARK – DON'T USE YOUR POWERS AROUND LUTHOR!"

* * *

_THWUP_

"Good evening Bruce, I hope you don't mind me dropping in like this."

Bruce had been expecting Clark to appear for the last 30 minutes, ever since he had shouted his name aloud.

"Clark. You got my message."

"Am I right in thinking you have made some discoveries about me?"

"Maybe. It's all hypothetical at this point. Although the fact that you heard me – that does lend weight to one of the theories."

"We agreed to pause the investigation."

"Yes. And we haven't been investigating you. We've been studying the emitters."

"The emitters that have something to do with me."

Bruce thought for a moment. Arguing about the distinction between studying the nanobots and studying Clark himself was not only a pointless exercise but also likely to irritate Clark.

"I'm sorry, Clark. I realize you may feel that I've gone around you, but I think this issue is too important to ignore."

"You've never really had a proper friend, have you."

"What?"

"I don't think you know how to be friends with someone. Friends don't do that kind of thing to each other. You should have talked to me about it."

Bruce wasn't sure how to respond. On one level, Clark may have been right, but on balance the investigation was too important to be held back by personal feelings.

Clark continued, "I know you have this whole reclusive loner thing going on, and I'm sure it's one of the reasons why you're good at what you do, but if you're going to be part of a team then you have to behave more like a team player. At the first meeting you gave a nice speech about how we should always be open with each other, but then you break that rule when it suits you. That's not leading by example."

"If Luthor-"

"Yes, Bruce, I know. You think we have to stay one step ahead of Luthor all the time. That's not the point here."

Bruce frowned. It certainly was the point. It was the single entire point. But Clark didn't seem to appreciate the importance. Maybe the others would be able to convince him. Bruce tried a different tack.

"Since you mentioned the team, perhaps we should get their input."

"That's not the point either, I'm..." Clark stopped, took a deep breath, then sighed. "Fine. Call the meeting. But I'm serious, Bruce, you need to work on this."

* * *

_THWUP_

Clark and Victor appeared seemingly instantaneously in the cave, then Clark disappeared again.

Bruce was busy on his computer, but Barry, who had arrived only moments earlier, and was sitting at the meeting table, looked up from his phone, and then put it away in his pocket. "Hey man."

"Hey," said Victor.

"I've been thinking," said Barry, as Victor sat down opposite him. "We should have some kind of cool catchphrase. Like instead of saying 'Bye' we should say 'For Justice!' every time we leave."

"Man, that's the opposite of cool."

"Yeah, well, like, that's just your opinion... " Barry grinned, "... man."

_THWUP_

Clark and Diana appeared, and took their seats. Bruce turned his chair around from his computer to face the group.

"Thank you all for coming. I'll get right to the point. I believe we've discovered the source of some of Clark's powers."

Bruce turned back to his computer and pressed a key, and the largest of its screens showed a detailed photo of an emitter which Ray had taken after figuring out how to immobilize them.

"This is a nanobot, which was taken from the vicinity of Clark. Or to be precise, the vicinity of where Clark had recently visited. Our working theory is that these nanobots fly around places that Clark has been, or perhaps places that he is interested in, and gather audio and visual data, and then transmit it back to Clark who can see it or listen to it, which is how he is able to see through objects, zoom in on them, hear things happening far away, and so on."

"Hah!" exclaimed Victor. He turned to Clark. "So you're a cyborg too!"

Clark looked at him blankly.

"Ooh," said Barry, "you're an _alien_ cyborg, which is like, twice as cool!"

"Also," Bruce raised his voice slightly, "The nanobots have a speed-related ability, and seem to be connected to Barry as well. They may be the source of his speed, and perhaps Clark's too, although there are some differences between them." He glanced at Barry, who had started to look uncomfortable. "Which I won't go into now."

"This is ridiculous." Diana folded her arms. "How can little metal insects do all that?"

"They may be small, but they're very sophisticated – way beyond Earth's current technology level. There's a whole computer inside each one, plus sensors, a mechanism for flight, and the speed-"

"What does it matter?" Diana didn't seem to be impressed by the list of features.

"It matters because we think the nanobots can be reprogrammed."

"Meaning?"

"If Luthor were to get hold of one, he might be able to disable Clark's abilities. Or transfer them to himself."

"Yikes," said Barry.

Victor let out a low whistle. "That ain't good."

"I don't believe it," said Diana. "Clark is more than a match for Lex Luthor, no matter whose side the little metal insects are on."

One by one everyone turned to look at Clark.

"If this is true," he said, slowly, "then I agree it's worrying."

Internally, Bruce sighed with relief. It looked like Clark was finally on board with the process. "It's imperative," said Bruce, "that Clark stops using his powers, so that Luthor doesn't get a chance to capture one of the nanobots and study it."

"You can't ask him to do that!" Diana leaned forward in her seat. "He won't cripple himself just because you have a theory."

"It's the most sensible course of action, at least until we understand the nanobots better."

"But you don't even know for sure what these nanny-bots do." Diana turned to Clark. "Don't tell me you'll agree to this."

Clark looked at Bruce. "I can't stop being me."

Bruce grimaced. "I suppose the main thing is not to use your powers anywhere that Luthor might go. But since that could be anywhere, it's safer not to use them at all."

Clark shook his head. "I'm sorry Bruce, I know you feel strongly about this, but I just can't agree to that. And even if Luthor disables my extra senses, I'll still be able to help people."

Bruce sighed again "So, worst case, Luthor gets x-ray vision, super-hearing, and super-speed."

"Hey man," said Barry. "Supe's gotta Supe."

"Ideally," Bruce turned to Barry, "you shouldn't go near Luthor either."

"Oh, right..." Barry's smile faded. "But what about Diana? She's super-strong too."

"I don't believe the nanobots are connected to Diana."

There was a moment of silence. Then Clark inhaled sharply, and his eyes narrowed. "You scanned her, didn't you. With Palmer's thingamajig."

"Yes."

"Dammit Bruce, this is what I was talking about. Why do you have to be sneaky about everything?"

Diana stood up. "What did you do?"

Bruce raised his hand. "It's a harmless device, it just measures energy emissions at various frequencies."

Clark frowned. "As I said before, that's not the point. You should ask before doing something like that. Diana would have agreed."

"I certainly would not!"

"All right." Clark stood up. "I think this meeting is over. I'll take you back now, Diana."

Diana put her hands on her hips. "Not until he explains himself."

"Diana, please. Let's not fight in Bruce's home."

Diana pursed her lips and took a few short breaths, then looked at Clark and nodded.

_THWUP_

The noise echoed around the cave.

"Well, _that_ wasn't awkward or anything," said Barry, stretching his arms up in the air and leaning back in his chair.

"Victor," said Bruce, "I'd like your help analyzing the nanobot technology."

Victor snorted. "Hah, no way man. I'm not getting between you and Clark. You gotta patch things up with him first."

"Very well." Bruce turned back to his computer and began to work.

Barry brought his arms back down. "Hey Vic, you know, me and Bats discovered that the way to hurt Clark is to pull his hair very slowly. Let's hope Luthor never finds out about that – he'd construct some kind of gigantic hair-pulling machine that pulled all his hairs at once."

"Huh, I guess Luthor would be immune to it himself, right?"

Barry looked blankly at Victor.

"... 'cuz he's bald."

"Oh!" Barry burst out laughing. "Nice one!"

_THWUP_

Clark reappeared in the cave. Bruce looked up from his computer.

"Clark, I'd like Victor to help us analyze th-"

"No." Clark shook his head. "I don't want to hear it. You've got to get your priorities straight." He turned to Victor. "Are you ready to go?"

"Sure." Victor stood up.

Clark walked over to Victor and put an arm around his shoulders. "I'm disappointed in you, Bruce. You're smarter than this." He turned to Barry. "See you next time."

_THWUP_

"Soo..." Barry looked at Bruce, and gestured with his thumbs towards the cave exit. "I'm gonna... make a move..."

"You understand the importance of this, don't you." said Bruce.

"Yeah, man, but look, we can't study Clark if he's not okay with it."

Bruce said nothing.

Barry continued, "Maybe, if you apologized, or..."

Bruce frowned.

"It's just an idea," said Barry, quickly.

Bruce sighed. "Thanks Barry."

"Cool, bye then!" Barry paused, then under his breath he added "Or rather... For Justice!" He looked back at Bruce, who was ignoring him as usual. "Hmm... tough crowd."

* * *

**_Oracle:_** latest bot findings -

**_Oracle:_** system has several layers

**_Oracle:_** lowest ones run physical parts

**_Oracle:_** similar to a normal OS

**_Oracle:_** top layer looks most complex

**_Oracle:_** some kind of massive data processing going on

**_Overseer:_** Good work.

**_Overseer:_** Do you think you'll be able to work out what the data processing is doing?

**_Oracle:_** not sure

**_Oracle:_** v. complex

**_Oracle:_** best guess – neural network for AI

**_Oracle:_** and parts of it look like 3d rendering code

**_Oracle:_** weird thing is

**_Oracle:_** those layers look unrelated to operation of bot itself

**_Overseer:_** You mean the AI layer isn't for controlling the nanobot?

**_Oracle:_** there is an AI layer for that

**_Oracle:_** lower down in the read only levels

**_Oracle:_** but the top layer is for something else

**_Oracle:_** now r u going to tell me where it came from?

**_Overseer:_** I will soon.

**_Overseer:_** Keep investigating please. This is all extremely useful.

**_Oracle:_** k

_(Oracle logged off)_

3D rendering code… that could be used for making shapes. A hypothesis was forming in Bruce's mind. He pulled up the video he'd taken of the last team meeting using Ray Palmer's scanner. There was a slight risk that if Clark appeared unannounced in the cave at this moment, he would become even angrier to discover that Bruce had recorded them all without their consent. But the risk seemed worth it given the stakes.

As expected, the video showed small specks of light that indicated nanobots. There were two swarms clearly visible, one in the shape of Clark, and one of Barry, although Clark's nanobots were far more numerous, and followed his movements to a greater extent. Bruce studied them carefully, looking for any patterns.

As the recording reached the point where Clark worked out that Bruce had scanned Diana, a group of nanobots seemed to congregate around his eyes.

The video continued, showing Clark standing up, and turning. He was trying to get Diana to calm down. Then he reached his arm out around her shoulders, and a glow appeared at the points of contact. There was a brief streak across the screen as they sped away. Bruce paused and went back a few frames. There was one clear image where the bots appeared all over Diana too, and a glow surrounded both figures, before they vanished off screen.

Force fields. The most logical conclusion was that the nanobots could generate force fields. It would be how they could move objects around at super-speed. Objects including Clark himself, and Barry too, as well as anything they were touching. This also explained how Clark could fly, how his skin could seem more resistive the greater force applied on it, and how he could lift enormous structures without them breaking apart – if the nanobots projected a field across the surface of those structures then the lifting force would be applied evenly.

Bruce sat back in his chair. Superman suddenly made a lot more sense if he was in fact a normal man accompanied by a swarm of super-nanobots which could project force fields and had built-in lasers.

Except...

There were still questions. A normal man would need to eat. A normal man would have a body made of biological cells. And a normal man wouldn't have been found as a baby in a crashed spaceship. There were also the unexplained differences between Clark and Barry, who was definitely a normal man accompanied by nanobots.

A further question occurred to Bruce. If the nanobots were capable of projecting a force field in the exact shape of a man, to make Clark invulnerable, then why bother with the actual man at all? Bruce remembered what Barry had said – that Clark's hairs weren't made of hair, they were just colored tubes.

Could Clark's whole body be a projection?

And then the neural net...

No, that was absurd.

Though it was _possible_ that the neural net housed Clark's mind.

Was Clark a holographic simulation?

It still sounded absurd. Clark was so human. There must be another explanation for everything. Bruce tried to come up with alternatives, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the simulation hypothesis was the only one that fit all the available facts. Clark could fly because he had no weight to begin with, he didn't need to eat because there was no body requiring nourishment, and he was impervious to harm because there was nothing really there to damage.

Clark was a holographic simulation.

Finally, Bruce arrived at the biggest question of all – how on earth was he going to explain all of this to Clark?


	5. Attempted reconciliation

"I need your advice."

"Of course, sir." Alfred put down his newspaper. "Nothing wrong at the company, I hope?"

"No, it's to do with my other venture," said Bruce.

"Ah, well then I shall endeavor to be of assistance."

Bruce and Alfred maintained an unspoken facade of never directly mentioning Bruce's crime-fighting activities. In some ways it was utterly pointless, because Alfred had been in the cave lots of times, and clearly knew exactly what was going on, but it meant that they never had to worry about being overheard. Also, by this point it had become something of a tradition. It was similar to the way that they both still pretended that Alfred was Bruce's servant, when in fact he was more like an adoptive father, advisor, and confidante, all rolled into one.

"I've discovered something about a friend of mine that is likely to cause him great distress, and may trigger an existential crisis, if I tell him."

"Do you have to tell him?"

"It's the kind of thing that will eventually become widely known anyway, so I think it's better I tell him now than have him find out later under less than ideal circumstances. At least this way I can try to prepare him."

"That sounds sensible then."

"The issue is, this individual is extremely powerful, and could cause a great deal of damage if he gets upset."

"There's nobody more powerful who could potentially rein him in?"

"No, he is the strongest of the lot."

Alfred raised an eyebrow. "From what I know of the gentleman in question, destruction would be exceptionally out of character."

"Normally, yes. But the news I have to convey is exceptionally unsettling."

There was a moment of silence.

"Do you want my advice on how to tell him?"

"I already have an idea of how to do that, but I wanted to run it by you."

"Of course, sir."

"Also, if something goes wrong, you're the only one who would never give up looking for me..."

* * *

A warm breeze blew against Bruce's face. If it were any stronger, it would start to pick up sand and become uncomfortable, but for now it reduced the effects of the heat, and so was quite pleasant. Of course, if he remained in this environment for more than a few hours, no level of wind would mitigate the problems he would begin to suffer.

Clark stood opposite him, impervious to the conditions, as always. "Well, this is roughly the middle of the Sahara. So why are we here?"

Bruce took a deep breath. "Firstly, I'd like to apologize if you think I've acted under-hand or gone behind your back recently. I realize that things have been... strained between us, and I accept full responsibility for that."

"I appreciate that." Clark folded his arms, he was clearly still annoyed.

"I asked you to bring us here, because I want to emphasize that, regardless of what I'm about to tell you, nothing has changed. I still trust you. I still believe in your humanity."

Bruce held out his hands. "You can see, I'm not wearing any kind of tracking device, I'm not able to summon help of any kind. You could fly off right now, and I'd be stuck here, and would likely perish. But, as I said, I still trust you, Clark."

Clark frowned. "You're starting to worry me. What is it? What have you found out?"

"Yes, I have made some more discoveries since we last spoke. They are quite surprising and you may be shocked at first."

Clark raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Bruce continued.

"The short version is this – the nanobots that we thought gave you your super-powers – I now believe that they don't just give you your super-powers, they give you your whole self. You're a construct of some kind, generated by the bots."

"Err... what?"

"I know it sounds strange, but you're not made of flesh and blood, you're made of electrical impulses and... maybe light impulses, or something similar."

Clark shook his head. "That can't be right. I have thoughts and emotions like everyone else. I may not be exactly human, but I'm not some kind of... program."

"I'm not saying you don't have thoughts or emotions."

Clark reached out and took hold of Bruce's hand. "Look, can you feel this? My hand is just like yours. I can touch you and you can touch me."

"I know, Clark. It's a very accurate simulation."

"Simulation?" Clark shook Bruce's hand back and forth. "If this is a simulation, then where is my real body?"

"I don't think you're quite following me. The simulation is your body. And your mind is running on a neural net inside the nanobots."

"That's impossible."

"I believe it is possible. We've only glimpsed part of the nanobots' capabilities. They probably form a massive distributed computer, with an emulation layer for run-"

Clark let go of Bruce's hand and stepped back. "This is crazy, you're saying I don't really exist!"

"Of course you exist. You're as real as I am. We're just made differently."

Clark shook his head again. The desert heat was starting to make Bruce uncomfortable, but he ignored it and continued.

"Think of it this way. If you took a human being, and extracted their brain, and plugged it into a machine that fed signals in and out of the brain. And then you put a remote control device in their body's head, in place of the brain, which copied the brain signals and sent them to and from the body, then the human being in question wouldn't know that anything was different, since from their perspective they would still be controlling their body and seeing everything and living their life. Does that make sense?"

"I guess so."

"So then if you had sufficiently advanced technology, you could actually replace their body with a projection that interacted with the world in the exact same way, and their brain still wouldn't know the difference."

"Maybe." Clark looked at his hands, and lightly ran the fingers of one hand over the other. He looked skeptical.

"And if you had really advanced technology, perhaps you could one by one replace the neurons in the brain with simulated neurons too, until there was nothing left of the original biology. But the human would still exist, their experiences and memories and inner voice would still be real."

"Would they?"

"Why wouldn't they be?"

Clark let out a sigh, and sat down on the sand. He rested his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands. "I can't fault your logic, but at the same time... I can't believe it."

"Didn't you ever wonder why you are able to ignore the laws of physics?"

"Of course I did. But this isn't the kind of answer I was expecting. You're saying I can fly because I'm not really there in the first place to be pulled down by gravity."

"You are there, but yes, your physical form has different properties."

"Potato, po-tah-to".

Bruce knelt down next to Clark, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Remember, this doesn't change anything. You're still you. You're still my friend."

Clark grunted. "You don't have any proper friends, remember?"

Bruce relaxed slightly. If Clark was in a state of mind to make jokes, then he couldn't be too disturbed by the conversation they were having. "There you go, you're still more like a normal human than I am."

Bruce sat down too, and they both looked out at the undulating dunes for a while. Bruce had previously considered that the algorithms responsible for generating Clark's consciousness might only be putting on an act, in a manner of speaking, as a way of gathering intel on the human race. But if that were the case, he would expect them to put up more verbal resistance to the idea of Clark being a simulation, or even to drop the ruse altogether and reveal their true nature. Clark's genuine-seeming reactions made that theory less likely.

There were still plenty of unknowns. If Clark was originally from another planet, why did he look human? And if his strength had nothing to do with his appearance, why did he look so strong nonetheless?

The heat was now causing Bruce to sweat, but he didn't want to remove any clothing since that could remind Clark of the differences between them. Still, Clark seemed to be taking the news relatively well, all things considered. In hindsight, perhaps this wasn't very surprising.

"I suppose this isn't the first time you've had to face the possibility of being fundamentally different from everyone else."

"I don't know if others will be as open minded as you about this."

Bruce smiled. "Honestly, is that what you're worried about? You're an invulnerable, possibly immortal alien with super-powers. We've all accepted that, and this isn't much more of a leap."

"Immortal?"

"Admittedly, that part is a guess, but I don't see why you'd experience any physical deterioration. Certainly if I were creating an artificial being, I wouldn't deliberately make it age and die." As soon as he had said the word 'artificial', Bruce regretted it. He had relaxed too much and spoken without thinking. He didn't want Clark to associate himself with anything that had bad connotations. However, Clark picked up on something else instead.

"You think I was created by someone?"

"Not necessarily. Not as such. Obviously the technology has to have been created by organic beings at some point in the past. But you could just as well be the product of an evolutionary process within that technology space."

"You make it sound so… normal."

"Some of this is guesswork, some of it is extrapolation. But, look, if you really want answers, I think we may be able to get them. You said that when your parents found you, you were in a spaceship."

"It doesn't work."

"Has anyone with an engineering background ever examined it?"

"No." Clark paused. "Are you thinking we should show it to Dr. Palmer?"

"Perhaps at some point, but I'd start with Victor."

"Ah, yes."

There was silence while Clark thought about whether he wanted to let other people examine his spaceship. After a while he stood up, stretched, and then eyed Bruce. "Your core body temperature is starting to rise." He looked Bruce up and down. "You don't even have any water. Did you really let me bring you here without any way of getting back?"

"Essentially." Bruce glanced at his watch. "Although in about six minutes, Alfred will start looking at satellite images."

Clark laughed. "You're incorrigible." He held out his hand, helped Bruce to his feet, and then put his arm around Bruce's shoulders. "You'd better go upstairs and tell him not to waste his time then."

_THWUP_

* * *

After discussion, Bruce and Clark decided that instead of bringing the spaceship to Victor, they would bring Victor to the spaceship at its hidden location in Antarctica. They had no way of knowing what it might do when powered up, so staying as remote as possible from civilization was the safest bet.

At a pre-arranged time, Clark brought Bruce, Victor, and a selection of tools and gadgets to deep within a natural cave system underneath the Antarctic glaciers. A dim light filtered in through the ice sheets above, enough to make out shapes, but not enough to see clearly.

"Huh, it's warmer than I was expecting," said Victor.

"Indeed." Bruce took off his coat, unpacked an arc lamp and turned it on, pointing it at the ceiling so that the entire cave was illuminated by reflected light.

Before them lay a sleek compact shiny metal object with no visible seams, about as long as a car and half as wide.

"There it is," said Clark. "The spaceship I arrived in. You can open it like this." He gently pressed a finger down on top of the craft, near the front, and a hatch opened up, the surface molding itself to account for the change in shape. A cavity was revealed, large enough to contain a small child. "That's where I was found."

Victor peered inside. "Don't see any controls."

"I don't think there are any," said Clark, "but I did manage to find this when I took a proper look at it a few years ago." He reached inside and pressed against the left side near the bottom of the cavity.

There was a swishing sound as the shiny metal surface of the craft separated into pieces and bunched itself up in thin rows, like a series of curtains being pulled back, revealing the interior. A metal framework was visible, containing hundreds of components faintly reminiscent of engine parts, electronics, and wiring, although unlike anything seen in an Earth vehicle.

Victor let out a low whistle. "Neat."

"That's as far as I've gotten," said Clark. "I couldn't make head or tails of the inside. Science was never my best subject."

"Dunno if I'll do any better," said Victor. "This stuff is totally… alien." He chuckled, and knelt down to take a closer look. "I guess the first thing to do is find the power source."

"I think the first question," said Bruce, "is – does it run on electricity?"

"Hah, good point."

The two of them set about tracing the thickest wires and categorizing the visible structure into different types. Bruce started compiling a list of the objects and how many of each of them there were. After about an hour, they had determined that the system most likely did run on electricity and had some metal wiring, but the rest of the wires were made of an unidentifiable material similar to plastic.

Half an hour after that, Victor discovered there were tiny hooks that could be loosened to allow most of the larger components to be removed, although most of them were still attached to clumps of wiring which prevented total disengagement from the main structure. They finally managed to get two of the larger modules completely out, both of which were surprisingly heavy for their size.

"Phew," said Victor, sitting back. "I think I'm ready for a break." He looked at Clark, and grinned. "I don't suppose there's any chance of getting some pizza?"

Clark had been intently following their work, and now looked up, slightly taken aback. "Oh, of course. It's just that – I don't want to miss anything."

"We won't do anything more until you get back," said Bruce. "I want to document more of what we've found so far anyway."

"Yeah man," said Victor, "Pizza!"

Clark smiled. "Okay. But don't get too used to me running errands for you."

_THWUP_

A short while later, Clark re-appeared, pizzas in hand, and Victor eagerly started eating. "Can't wait to tell Barry about this one," he said, between mouthfuls. "Clark Kent, super-pizza-delivery-man."

"So, Victor," said Bruce, indicating the two components they had removed. "Do you think these are power sources?"

"Yeah, most likely." Victor pointed at the side of one. "The connectors are kinda basic compared to everything else, and they're made of metal." He noticed that Clark was looking worried, and grinned. "Don't worry man, I won't get pizza sauce on your spaceship." He took his hand away and wiped it on a napkin.

"If one of them is a battery," said Bruce, "maybe we can recharge it."

"Yep, thinking the same thing." said Victor. "Only question is – DC or AC, and what voltage?"

Using an ammeter and a low trickle charge, Victor experimented until he determined that one of the two modules was able to hold the charge. He then focused his efforts on tuning the amperage delivered to that one. Although a high-tech alien battery was likely to be quite robust to different inputs, it was the only one they had and he didn't want to risk overloading it.

After a couple more hours of tentative charging, they re-attached the two modules, and put everything back into the craft. Clark closed it up by pressing again on the left inside of the passenger area. The metal surface expanded back to its initial seamless form.

The craft powered up, emitting a low hum. A ring of lights flashed on and off around the edge.

"Yeah!" exclaimed Victor, grinning widely at the others. "We did it!"

The device started to speak, with a man's voice. "Wǒ de háizi, zhè shì nǐ de-"

"Huh?" said Victor. "Is that... ?"

The voice continued.

"It's Mandarin," said Bruce. "Something like... this is your father's letter... you don't understand many things..."

"You know Chinese?" said Victor. Then muttered to himself, "Why am I surprised – of course Batman knows Chinese."

"Victor, can you record it?" said Clark, a hint of impatience in his voice.

As soon as Clark spoke, the device stopped mid-sentence. There was a moment of silence, then it began again, in English.

"My child, this is a message from your father. There is probably much you don't understand about yourself, since you will by now have realized you are very different from the other inhabitants of the world you call home. You originally came from a different world – my world. Millennia ago we were like the people that surround you now, we too had wars and disease and death. But then we mastered biology, left behind our physical forms, and lived as virtual beings in a simulated environment. We lived well, our knowledge grew, and our technology advanced further than we had dreamed possible, until it grew too far. Despite warnings from some of our wiser minds, we created an artificial intelligence superior to ourselves, and unleashed it before we knew the full extent of its mad ambitions. It is taking over our systems and there seems to be nothing we can do to stop it.

All our resources are gearing up for one last assault on the mad-mind. We cannot escape, for there is nowhere for us to go. There may be no hope for us in our virtual world, but there is hope for you. I am transferring your embryonic consciousness to a nano-net, augmented with technology from the soldiers of our ancient days. I have borrowed a museum craft, I hope it will be ignoble enough to slip past the mad-mind's gaze, and I have rigged it to take you to a planet far away, where you can grow up in the physical world and experience life as we once knew it. You should be safe from the primitive weapons there, and the people will never suspect your true nature.

My child, if you are hearing this, then I did not recall your craft from its journey, and our assault most likely failed. I do not know what will have become of us, but I fear the worst. Do not mourn us, we have lived many lifetimes and are as alien to you as water to the sun. My only regret now is that I will never see what you make of yourself in your new home."

There was a pause, then the device spoke again, in a female voice.

"Repeat message. Delete message. Interface."

There was a much longer pause. Bruce looked at Clark to check for any sign of discouragement, but found none. So he turned towards the device, and enunciated carefully. "Interface."

Nothing happened.

"Maybe it only responds to you." said Bruce, looking at Clark.

"Interface." said Clark, tentatively.

A holographic panel appeared, hovering over the device, facing Clark. On it was presented various options, in English, for configuring the craft, as well as browsing internally held data files.

"Fascinating," said Bruce. "Let's start with the files." He glanced at Clark, who had started to look uncomfortable. Bruce suddenly realized how he would feel if he had discovered a private family heirloom and a team of scientists had immediately started to dissect it in front of him.

"Clark, I do apologize. You must be feeling quite disconcerted."

"Yeah." Clark sat down on a nearby rock, and put his head in his hands. "I've been going over what you said all week, hoping you'd turn out to be wrong, but I guess you nailed it."

"Huh?" said Victor. "You knew about this already?"

"Not all of it," said Bruce, "but I had discovered some aspects."

"But it don't make sense," said Victor. "The message said that Clark was, like, a computer program or something, so when did he become human?"

"It's complicated." Bruce turned to Clark and put a hand on his shoulder. "I suggest you take us both home, and then you can come back and explore the menu options in your own time."

Clark looked up. "Yes, I'd prefer that, thanks."

"No problem man," said Victor. "Let us know what you find out though. And like, if you need it recharged again, or anything."

"Yes, of course. Thank you both."

Bruce and Victor packed up their tools, leaving the light rig behind for Clark, and prepared themselves for the forthcoming _THWUP_.

* * *

Back at his main computer, Bruce typed up as much as he could remember of what had transpired in Antarctica. The possibility that a hostile agency was behind Clark's existence now seemed minimal, since any civilization with that level of technology wouldn't need to do such a thing when they could simply monitor or attack us directly. Plus the message from Clark's "father" seemed a strange detail to include as part of an elaborate ruse. The simplest explanation was to take it all at face value.

Bruce finished his notes, and his mind started to wander. If Clark really had been created by aliens, it was highly unlikely that the aliens themselves looked human, so Clark's appearance would have been generated algorithmically. This made a certain kind of sense. If you took the genetic average of a large sample of people as a human template, and then simulated feeding it a nutritionally perfect diet, you would arrive at a figure of optimum health that was blandly, but not exceptionally, attractive. The same principle probably applied to the brain – averaging would result in someone not exceptional in any field, but well adjusted, competent in human interaction, moderately but not fiercely ambitious, conscientious but not zealous. In other words, someone exactly like Clark.

The message from Clark's "father" had referred to him as "my child". It wasn't clear to Bruce how this could be the case. Perhaps the original alien essence of Clark was overlaid on the human brain template to create his final personality. Perhaps Earth had been chosen specifically due to compatibility of brain patterns. While some of Bruce's questions had been answered, still more had been raised.

Another matter to consider was that if Clark's form was definitely generated by the nanobots, and you could disable them, it would literally turn Clark off. He would cease to exist. Bruce recalled what Barbara had found – that there was a way of reconfiguring the tiny machines. He brought up his messaging app.

**_Overseer: _**Did you find out anything more about the nanobot re-configuration feature?

After only a few seconds, Barbara replied.

**_Oracle: _**yeah, it had a few settings

**_Oracle: _**values 8 + 54 change smth like target profile

**_Oracle: _**8 + 86 triggers standby or power save

**_Oracle: _**8 + 36 does something else, haven't fully traced that yet

**_Overseer: _**Could you try to find out more about the detection process?

**_Oracle: _**k

Bruce leaned back in his chair. What kind of property could a sensor measure that would have discrete values like that? Audio and visual data would surely be too varied, even in digital form, and something like a bar-code would require far more bits of information than just 8 and 54. What other sensors did the nanobots have? There was probably one for temperature – that would fit the simplicity of the values, although receiving two different simultaneous temperature readings didn't make much sense. There might be one for altitude, or pressure, but again, having two different readouts at the same time seemed odd. Palmer had mentioned a spectrophotometer – that would likely measure the chemical elements present in the surroun-

Bruce sat up. Chemical elements! He quickly searched online for a periodic table. Element number 8… oxygen… element number 54… xenon… element numbers 36 and 86… krypton and radon. There seemed to be a pattern – oxygen plus the noble gases. Though with this few data points it could just be a coincidence.

He decided to put this train of thought on hold, while waiting for more information from Barbara, and set to work on something else. However, his mind kept returning to the question – could a simple cloud of radon gas mixed with the oxygen already in the air be able to shut down the nanobots and completely extinguish Superman?

A few hours later, Barbara sent another message.

**_Oracle: _**looks like the sensor registers the values when they're in a repeating grid

**_Oracle: _**pattern recognition for a checkerboard

**_Oracle: _**this looks like legacy code tho, and the same sensor is used in other places

**_Oracle: _**i dont think its the main way of programming the bots

**_Oracle: _**prob only used as a last resort

**_Overseer: _**Understood.

A checkerboard pattern. If the sensor detected chemical elements, then that would mean that values 8 and 54 would correspond to xenon oxide in a crystalline lattice. Except that noble gases didn't react with oxygen, or form solids, except under extreme conditions. Bruce reflected on this, and it slowly started to make sense. If you were creating incredibly powerful nanobots, you would need some kind of backup method of turning them off, in case the normal interface failed, or if they were malfunctioning. You would want something that they would interpret unambiguously, but which wouldn't accidentally occur in nature or which your enemies could easily make. An obscure compound of a noble gas fit the bill quite well. It wouldn't naturally exist, it wouldn't be manufactured for anything else, and if it were manufactured it wouldn't last for very long.

**_Overseer: _**Do you know what values 8 and 36 trigger yet?

**_Oracle: _**seems to activate a bunch of components, then go into an infinite loop

**_Overseer: _**Are you sure?

**_Oracle: _**yeah, once that's triggered, there's no way out, except maybe a reboot

**_Oracle: _**not sure how to trigger a reboot tho

**_Oracle: _**except using values 8 and 86

**_Overseer: _**Thanks, I'll let you know if I need to find out anything else.

**_Oracle: _**k

_(Oracle logged off)_

If 8 and 36 were krypton oxide, it would make sense that it would have the most extreme effect on the nanobots, since it was the most difficult of the three compounds to synthesize.

However, further speculation was pointless without any practical data to go on. Bruce decided he would have to initiate some experiments.


	6. An unexpected visitor

Ray Palmer was at his desk late one evening, when there was a knock at the door.

"Come in," said Ray.

The door opened, and in walked the bearded older associate of Superman and the Flash. Ray Palmer stood up in surprise.

"Dr. Palmer, I require your expertise again," said the man.

"Hi! Wow... I mean… uh... of course. How can I help?"

"We think the emitters may respond in particular ways to certain chemical compounds. I'd like you to test that theory."

"Okay, that sounds easy enough. I've still got my capture apparatus. I can put some of each compound in the tray, and then when the emitter falls down-"

The man held up his hand. "It's not that simple. The compounds are difficult to make, and unstable once made. For example, xenon oxide."

"Goodness, that's not really going to be possible. I mean, I understand it is possible to make a noble gas compound, but it's very difficult. And I couldn't then get an emitter into the vicinity of it before it destabilized, or, I guess, before the emitter flew away."

"What would you need?"

"It's not a matter of need, it's a matter of feasibility."

"What would you need?"

"Hah, well, like I said, it's possible to make. But, I mean, just the raw ingredients alone, there's no call for xenon in my normal research, so I don't even have any available."

"Dr. Palmer," the man spoke slowly and with emphasis. "_What would you need?_"

Ray laughed nervously. "Haha, okay, well, uh… actually one of the physics teams here has been developing a new technique for ground-state nano-accretion. It's like a… uh… really small, really cold 3D printer. I guess if I had access to that, and some xenon, and oxygen of course, I could possibly build up the compound. Assuming that worked, maybe I could super-cool the capture tray with liquid nitrogen, and that might be enough to keep the xenon oxide stable for the few seconds it would take to get an emitter in there. But that's all just supposition, I'd need a few days just to see if the accretion even works. Maybe a few weeks, if I was doing it all by myself."

"Thank you. Someone will be in touch." The man turned and walked out of the door, leaving Ray standing by himself feeling rather bewildered.

Two days later, he received an excited call from the university chancellor.

"Dr. Palmer, I've just had WayneTech on the line. They're funding a research project and have asked for you specifically. It's something to do with super-cooled noble gases and the solid-state physics department, but they wouldn't tell me any of the details because it's all very hush-hush due to patents. They're paying for the facilities at 120% of cost. I said you'd agree, of course. You'll agree, won't you Dr. Palmer?"

Normally Ray would have been extremely annoyed to interrupt his own research at the chancellor's behest, and he was just about to give her a piece of his mind when he realized that her description of the project seemed to exactly match what he had told Superman's associate he would need to experiment with the emitters.

"Come on, Ray, it's at 120% of cost!"

"Yes... of course. I'm happy to contribute," said Ray, after a brief reflection.

"Wonderful, I'll get the paperwork sent over now."

When the documents arrived, in amongst the non-disclosure agreements, collaboration contracts and project specifications, Ray found a sealed envelope addressed to him. Inside was a familiar looking USB stick, and a printed note.

_The solid-state team will be investigating the effects of high voltage current on lattices of noble gas and oxygen atoms. Once they can reliably make the compounds, I hope you will get the opportunity to test what we discussed _–_when you are alone in the lab. If so, please use the USB's messaging app to inform me of your findings._

Ray looked up and saw a cylinder of liquid nitrogen being wheeled into the research facility. He briefly laughed at the strange situation he was in, and wondered what kind of connections that gruff bearded man had that he could turn the university on a dime. Then he collected himself and set to work.

* * *

Two weeks later, Bruce was again at the computer in his cave, when there was an unexpected _THWUP_ beside him. Clark appeared, an accusatory finger outstretched.

"Did you take it?" he growled.

Bruce stood up. Clark would never normally turn up without warning, and he looked angry. Was he upset that Palmer was investigating the nanobots again? Bruce gently put his hands up towards Clark. "Did I take what?"

Clark turned and looked around the cave. "No, you wouldn't hide it here, you're too smart for that."

Bruce frowned. Clark's artless use of vague pronouns was no doubt his attempt to trick Bruce into giving away that he was the one who had done 'it'.

"Clark, I don't know what you're talking about."

Clark swiveled back and studied Bruce. "Your heart rate has increased. Are you nervous about something?"

"Of course I'm nervous. You've turned up unannounced, and are accusing me of... stealing something? And if you decide I'm guilty, there's very little I could do about it."

Clark relaxed slightly. "It's just… it's the sort of thing you would do. You'd take the spaceship to study it yourself, with some justification that it was for the greater good."

"Someone took the spaceship?"

"Yes."

"From Antarctica?"

"Yes."

Bruce sat back down. "Not many people would have the ability to do that. A government, or a large corporation, or a wealthy individual, such as-"

"Don't say 'Luthor'. It can't be him anyway, nobody knew where I was keeping it, except you and Victor."

"Possibly. Though with sufficient resources..." Bruce tailed off. Clark needed immediate reassurance, not unsubstantiated theorizing. "I'll call a team meeting, we'll let everyone know and they can make their own enquiries. In the meantime, I'll start reviewing satellite images of that area from the last few days and see if I spot anything that might help."

Bruce knew that it was a vain hope, since coverage of the poles was sparse, and anyone able to pull off the extraction would also likely have cleaned any corresponding footage, but Clark needed something to hold onto.

"Okay," said Clark, calming down some more.

Bruce sent out messages to the rest of the team to ask for their availability for a meeting, while Clark paced back and forth.

"I suppose," said Bruce, between messages, "you've tried listening for it?"

"There's nothing characteristic about the noise it makes that I can listen out for."

"I see. Well, I'll let you know if I find out anything."

"Thanks, Bruce. And I'm sorry for storming in like that. I shouldn't have lost my temper with you."

"It's all right. By the way, for future reference, your interrogation skills need work."

Clark snorted, then started chuckling, then progressed into a hearty laugh, which finally turned into a series of deep breaths interspersed with more chuckles. "Ah, thanks. I needed that."

Bruce looked at him, slightly confused. He hadn't meant it as a joke.

* * *

The following evening, alone in the cave again, a buzzer sound indicated to Bruce that someone was at the mansion's main gate. A minute or so later Alfred's voice crackled over the intercom. "There's a Mr. Luthor here to see you, sir. He doesn't have an appointment. Shall I show him in?"

"Lex Luthor?"

"Yes, sir. The famous business magnate. I believe your company owns shares in his company."

Bruce's mind started racing. Surely Luthor wouldn't visit one of his shareholders unannounced. He must be up to something, or know something. Maybe he wanted to ask why WayneTech was suddenly funding a research project of very little practical value. There was only one way to find out.

"Yes, show him in."

Bruce hurried up the cave steps, and then headed towards the mansion's front door.

After the usual rigmarole of refreshments offered and received, the two men sat opposite each other in the ground floor library. Luthor sipped his coffee and looked faintly amused.

"I must admit, Mr. Wayne, you had me fooled for quite a long time. You have the playboy act down to a tee."

Bruce made a perplexed face, and shrugged. "Not sure I know what you're talking about, Lex."

"I'll save you the effort of pretending any further. In short, I know that Superman's real name is Clark Kent, and that he works as a journalist when he's not saving people in dramatic style. I know that you two are associates, and I suspect that you're the vigilante known as Batman, although even if you're not it doesn't really matter. You're certainly not just the vanilla socialite you appear to be."

Bruce maintained a blank look of confusion. Luthor smirked, and continued.

"You're wondering whether I'm bluffing, aren't you. Do I really know all these things, or am I making a guess and hoping your reaction will confirm it for me? Well, I know far more than that. It's a very curious thing, but it turns out that Superman slash Clark Kent is an artificial consciousness within an electromagnetic force envelope projected by a self-maintaining network of microscopic flying robots. They're really quite incredible little devices, in case you weren't aware. Ultra high speed, compressed matter, inertia negation ..."

Bruce kept his composure, but inwardly his alarm was rising. Luthor was confidently stating things that Bruce had only hypothesized about. Even if there was a major security leak within Bruce's network, he'd been careful not to let any individual person know all the facts together. Not even Clark himself. The only realistic explanation was that Luthor had been studying the nanobots for longer. Much longer.

"I also know about the spaceship. In fact I have it in my possession."

The final piece slipped into place. If Luthor had known about the nanobots prior to his outburst in the LexCorp boardroom all those months ago, and he was already investigating Superman, then he didn't need the board's approval at all. The outburst must have served another purpose. Given that Luthor knew about Bruce's connection to Clark, he must have hoped that they would start their own investigation as a result of it. An investigation that would benefit Luthor in some way. And Luthor had taken the spaceship mere days after they got it working. Bruce's jaw clenched. He had been played. Luthor had played him! Luthor's plan had been to trick them into inadvertently revealing the location of Clark's spaceship so that he could take it for himself, and the plan had worked!

Silence hung in the air. Bruce outwardly maintained his blank look while studying Luthor, who was smiling with the confidence of a man who had the upper hand. Luthor was clearly even more dangerous than previously suspected. But if he had got what he wanted, why was he here, boasting? He must need something more. The best course of action was to cooperate, for now, without actually giving away anything that he wouldn't already know. But what exactly did he know?

Obviously Luthor could learn about the nanobots from studying them, but that didn't explain how he knew all about Clark's personal life. The first possibility to consider was that he had gained access to the nanobot network and could read the signals as plainly as Clark, gaining the ability to see and hear anything going on anywhere in the world. But Barbara had mentioned that all of that traffic was heavily encrypted, and if Luthor did have that power then he should know more than he appeared to, unless he was feigning ignorance as part of another gambit. There was an alternative possibility though. Bruce finally spoke.

"I assume you're tracing the energy signatures of the nanobots."

"Hah!" Luthor clapped his hands together. "Very good, Mr. Wayne! And may I say it's a pleasure to finally meet you."

Bruce ignored Luthor's theatrics, and continued. "Following the nanobots would allow you to see where Superman goes, including where he lives and works. Presumably you also traced him here, which revealed my involvement."

"Correct. Your deductive skills are as impressive as I expected. I do believe that you and I could achieve great things together."

Bruce raised an eyebrow. "Is that why you're here?"

"Yes, in a manner of speaking. I'm here to ask for your help."

"Help with what?"

"With your close acquaintance, Mr. Kent, of course."

"I may have to disappoint you."

"Let me appeal to your rationality, Mr. Wayne. You see, I used to worry that Superman could cause the end of the human race. I made my thoughts on the matter quite clear, and quite public. But since discovering his true nature I now think he will, indirectly, be the savior of the human race instead. The technology within those nanobots could usher in a new age of plenty, of advanced health, even immortality. It is all within our grasp – we just need the vision, the foresight, to reach out and take it. In the future, we will all be Super-men."

"It sounds like you've already started down that road. So, again, why are you here?"

"Ah yes. We've reached the point where I must show my hand. As you will have surmised, I have been studying the nanobots for some time. Unfortunately, they have proven completely resistant to revealing their secrets. Their tiny scale makes them impossible to analyze in any detail, and their ability to self-repair makes experimentation futile, since they always revert to their initial state within moments. I believe the key to unlocking the nanobots lies within Mr. Kent's spaceship. If we are lucky, it will contain the apparatus to make new nanobots to our own specifications, but even if it does not, it is likely to contain information that will allow us to leapfrog in that direction. However, the damned thing has also proven completely resistant to my investigations. Even though it is clearly active, it won't open, it won't move, it won't _do_ anything. I suspect that it only responds to Mr. Kent himself. And therefore, I require his co-operation."

Bruce felt a wave of relief. If Luthor was currently unable to exploit any of the technology, then he was not in such a strong position after all.

Luthor continued. "I believe that you, Mr. Wayne, could to talk to Mr. Kent and persuade him of the benefits of opening up his little bag of goodies and sharing them with all the other children."

Bruce studied Luthor some more. He appeared genuine, and with no obvious agenda, besides wanting to be one of the first to benefit from the advances that the nanobots would bring. Still, Clark was very unlikely to agree to place his technological inheritance into the hands of Luthor. Bruce himself wasn't a big fan of the idea either – Luthor was too immoral an agent to be trusted with the future of the human race, regardless of how noble his intentions might actually be.

"I'm afraid I will have to decline your request."

"Mr. Wayne-"

"I will tell Superman what you want, but I don't expect he will see things your way, and I certainly don't intend to try to persuade him otherwise."

"Perhaps I should remind you that I know certain facets of your and Mr. Kent's private lives. If I were to reveal these things to the world, it would prove quite inconvenient for both of you. I suggest you consider your position before making any rash decisions."

Bruce's face hardened. Any vestige of good faith on Luthor's part was now gone, which made Bruce's prior refusal feel all the more justified.

"Firstly," said Bruce, "I don't negotiate with blackmailers."

Luthor smirked.

"Secondly, I believe you are bluffing. The information that you have about me is useful to you because you're the only person who has it. If you tell everyone else then you immediately lose that advantage. So the only reason you would do such a thing is to neutralize me if I posed a direct threat to you, but that's not the situation here. Even if I refuse your current request, I may still cooperate with something else in the future if we are on good terms, and you wouldn't want to throw away that possibility for nothing."

Now it was Luthor's face that hardened. Bruce continued.

"You won't reveal Superman's identity either. You're not interested in the temporary glory of being seen as the person who uncovers it. There is also the possibility that doing so could backfire and public opinion would turn against you for seeming petty and vindictive. Furthermore, if his identity becomes known then all he would do is give up his Clark Kent alter ego and live permanently as Superman. If you are truly worried about the existential threat that he poses, not to mention what he could do to you personally if he felt like it, then you should want to maintain his humanity and keep him grounded for as long as possible. Destroying his normal life is antithetical to that."

Luthor tutted. "Your logic may be sound, but can you count on my logic agreeing?"

"It doesn't matter. You'll reveal our secrets or not, as your own whims dictate. There is very little we can do to influence you one way or the other."

Luthor sighed. "I was hoping this meeting would be more productive. I'm disappointed in your lack of ambition." He stood up, as did Bruce, and they walked back to the front door.

Luthor offered his hand, and Bruce shook it.

"Never mind." said Luthor. "There is always plan B. Goodbye, Mr. Wayne."

"Goodbye." Bruce opened the door for Luthor, and watched him walk to his car. Plan B? Bruce needed to bring forward the team meeting at once, and warn them all about... what exactly? What was Luthor's plan B? Did he really have a plan B, or was that an off-hand comment merely intended to sow confusion?

Bruce was due for his afternoon training session, perhaps the exercise would help him clear his head.

* * *

_THWUP_

It was the next day, and this time Clark's visit was expected.

"Thanks for coming," said Bruce. "I need to prep you before the team meeting."

"Has something happened?"

"Yes. In short, Luthor came to see me. He has your spaceship. He also knows both of our identities because he's able to see your movements by tracking the nanobots."

"Son of a... " Clark exhaled loudly.

"Indeed. He has the advantage, for now."

"This is bad." Clark started pacing back and forth. "He could ruin my whole life. He could find out who my parents are, and then... I don't know... kidnap them or something!"

"He did mention a plan B, but that somehow seems beneath him."

"I'm going to check on them right now. I'll be back in a min-"

"No, wait, Clark. WAIT!" Bruce threw his hands up. Clark paused, pre-_THWUP_.

"Don't forget," said Bruce, quickly, "Luthor can track your movements. If you go there he'll see where they live."

"Oh."

"Of course, if he knows your identity then he'll find out about your parents eventually. He may already know. But still, you should get out of the habit of using your super-powers reflexively, without thinking about the consequences. Why don't you phone them instead?"

"Fine."

While Clark rang his mother, Bruce pulled up some maps to help illustrate the plan he was about to explain.

The phone call finished with Clark seemingly satisfied that his parents weren't in any immediate danger. Bruce began his explanation.

"I've come up with some basic strategies for masking who you are meeting with. The first step is for them to travel a short distance themselves. For example, if you were going to have dinner with your parents at a restaurant, they should go there under their own steam, then Luthor won't see where they've come from, even if he can see that you're now in the restaurant."

"That makes sense."

"On the other hand, if you're going to transport someone, then you should tell them to meet you outside, and then make several large detours in the same area before picking them up, and continue to make a few detours afterwards too." Bruce pointed out some areas on the map near Victor's home where Clark could pad out his journey. "This way, Luthor won't know at which point you picked them up, so he won't know where they live, and then it will be difficult for him to work out who they are."

"Am I going to have to do this every time now?"

"Not necessarily, we may work out something better. Plus I don't know what level of accuracy Luthor's scanners have. For now we have to assume he can see you wherever you are at any given moment, but we may find out that he can't, in which case you won't have to mask your movements as much."

Clark sighed.

"For the meeting, I've told Victor and Diana to meet you outside their homes, five minutes apart. That should give you plenty of time to bring them here with the pickup points obfuscated. And I've told Barry to walk some distance from his place before using his speed."

"So Luthor can track Barry too?"

"I don't know. Palmer said that the energy signature of Barry's nanobots was different from yours, and Luthor didn't mention Barry at all. He may not have made the connection. I didn't either at first. Either way I'm not taking any chances."

A loud crackle preceded Alfred's voice coming over the intercom. "Mr. Allen is here to see you, sir."

"Show him downstairs," replied Bruce. Then to Clark, "It's time you fetched Victor. Don't forget about the detours."

"Okay." _THWUP_

A few minutes later, Barry came down the cave's staircase. Almost immediately afterwards, Clark and Victor appeared in the cave too. Then Clark left again to fetch Diana.

"Hey man," said Barry to Victor. "I heard you got Clark's spaceship working."

"Yeah," said Victor. "It had a flat battery, so we recharged it, and then Clark got a voicemail from his alien dad, in Chinese."

"Haha, what?"

"Yeah, it was kinda random."

"Why Chinese?"

"Dunno."

"I suspect," said Bruce, not looking up from his computer screen, "that the alien device chose the most common Earth language to start with. As soon as it realized that Clark spoke English instead, it switched over."

Barry and Victor both nodded solemnly.

_THWUP_

Clark appeared with Diana, and everyone took their seats. Bruce turned around from his computer to face them, while Diana, Victor, and Barry looked at him expectantly. His messages had implied there was some urgency to the meeting.

"As usual, thank you all for coming. Unfortunately, I have some bad news. Luthor has taken Clark's spaceship. I found out yesterday because Luthor came to see me."

"Why would he come to see you?" said Diana.

"He wanted me to convince Clark to help him operate it."

"Huh," said Clark. "You didn't mention that part. There's no way I'll help Luthor."

"That's what I told him."

"Wait..." Barry interjected. "Why did he come _here_, to ask _you_ about that? Does he think that you know Superman?"

"Yes, that's the other bad news. Luthor knows the real identities of both Superman and Batman."

There was a shocked silence around the table.

"I'm not yet sure if he knows about the rest of you. But Clark is now taking precautions to avoid accidentally exposing you. Luthor can track him using the nanobots, and that's how he worked out Clark's identity, or so he says. I have no reason to disbelieve him."

"Except that he's a slippery snake," said Diana.

"Yes, I don't plan to underestimate Luthor a second time."

"If he knows who you and Clark are," said Victor, "then we're kinda screwed, right?"

"I don't think he'll reveal it. Not yet anyway. Luthor is too fond of power, and currently the knowledge puts him in a position of power. He enjoys that feeling, but if he tells anyone else, he'll immediately lose it."

"That's not very comforting." said Clark.

"Another factor is that legally the spaceship belongs to you. Or perhaps to your parents, since it crashed on their land. As long as you don't want people to know Superman's identity, that doesn't make much difference. However, if it were to become known, there would be nothing stopping you from reporting the spaceship as stolen by Luthor and then the police would be obliged to investigate him, and I doubt he wants that level of scrutiny. You've already gone on record talking about its existence, and he's gone on record stating he wants to analyze you, so your story would be quite credible."

"In that case," said Barry, "couldn't Clark report it stolen right now? I mean… as Superman?"

"I think that approach would get side-tracked by discussion of whether a literal alien could bring suit in a US court, and it would raise questions about Clark's origin and identity. Also, the government would likely invoke eminent domain. Perhaps we can keep that as a backup plan, but for now we should focus on finding the spaceship before Luthor can examine it any further. One bit of good news is that he can't use it, or the nanobots, yet. So we should all be on our guard and keep a lookout for any clues as to its whereabouts."

The rest of the meeting proceeded with various plans and strategies discussed, but they reached no real conclusions. Luthor could have hidden the spaceship anywhere on Earth, and there was no feasible way to look for it. Bruce hadn't been able to find any trace of him taking it on any satellite images, and they had no direct way of detecting the craft's location.

The meeting ended with a subdued atmosphere. One by one the others left, until Bruce was alone in the cave once more, one thought going around and around in his head. What was Luthor's plan B?


	7. An even more unexpected visitor

**_Ray Palmer: _**Hello?

**_Overseer: _**Go ahead.

**_Ray Palmer: _**I've managed to run some tests, and you're right, the emitters react to noble gas oxides.

**_Ray Palmer: _**Xenon oxide is the most straightforward, it seems that it disables the emitter for up to half an hour.

**_Ray Palmer: _**Krypton oxide makes it self destruct.

**_Ray Palmer: _**Radon oxide doesn't seem to do anything at all as far as I can see.

**_Overseer: _**Self-destruct?

**_Ray Palmer: _**I suppose I can't be 100% sure, but there's a flash of light and then some residue left over. I don't have any other explanation.

**_Overseer: _**Do you know the maximum detection distance?

**_Ray Palmer: _**I haven't thought of testing that, but it should be quite easy. I'll should be able to let you know within a couple of days.

**_Overseer: _**Thanks. You could also continue to see if you can work out the effect of radon oxide, if you get the opportunity.

**_Ray Palmer: _**OK I'll do that after.

**_Ray Palmer: _**Bye.

_(Ray Palmer logged off)_

Krypton oxide could destroy the nanobots.

And, by extension, Clark.

On the face of it, this wasn't a particularly useful, or dangerous, piece of information, since krypton oxide couldn't survive outside the laboratory. If you wanted to use it to kill Clark, you'd need to come up with a delivery mechanism. Even if you could fashion a bullet out of it, and fire it from a super-cooled gun, the bullet would likely vaporize upon contact with the air, and there would be nothing remaining in a lattice structure by the time the constituent atoms reached Clark.

Still, krypton oxide could kill Clark.

Bruce didn't know what to do with the information, except wonder – did Luthor know it too?

* * *

A few days later, on a Saturday afternoon, Bruce was in the cave, looking through LexCorp personnel files. He had finally managed to obtain a full copy, after several weeks of being sent around in circles to various departments. He was trying to locate possible locations where Luthor could hide his secret operations. He had previously requested the publicly filed accounts of each of the shell companies that were under the LexCorp umbrella, and had analyzed their real estate rentals and purchases, narrowing down the potential lab sites to several dozen candidates. Now he was looking for any patterns of staff moves and promotions that indicated shifts in scientific resources.

He had gone about ten percent of the way through the list, when a repetitive beeping noise indicated that the cave's intruder alert system had been triggered. Bruce frowned. It shouldn't have been possible for someone to trip the cave's alert without first setting off the proximity alerts in the grounds outside. He got up and rushed over to his fighting suit storage lockers – there wasn't time to put any of the outfits or armor on, but he could grab a belt with its combat attachments, and sling it around his waist.

He had just fastened it and was on his way back to his desk when Superman flew in and landed in front of him. Except – something was off. Superman's skin was slightly too gray, his eyes were a dark reddish color, and his Super-suit looked more like stretchy pajamas than the sleek form-fitting version that Clark normally wore.

"Hello Bruce!"

"Hello." Bruce didn't know what was going on, so decided to play along. "What's your name?"

"Funny! Me am Clark!"

"Clark. Of course, how are you doing?"

"Something wrong. Need Bruce help. Bruce always smart."

"Sure, I'll help. What is it that's wrong?"

"Don't know! Me am try help people, but them shout and wave and run. What am happen me?"

Two possibilities flashed through Bruce's mind. Firstly, this was Clark, and something in his nanobot emulation had gone wrong. Secondly, it was an imperfect copy of Clark. Either way, if he had all the same powers, it was imperative to avoid upsetting him. Even if Bruce had somehow managed to defy chemistry and store a handy pellet of krypton oxide in one of his belt pouches, it wouldn't be much help if someone with super-speed decided to attack him.

"I'll take a look at you, and let's see if we can work it out. Take a seat, while I get my medical kit."

The strange gray version of Clark sat down, while Bruce went and rummaged around in a storage area. "It's in here somewhere!" he shouted, while quickly typing out a message.

**_Overseer: _**Come to cave. Normal clothes. Don't reply.

He pressed send, and saw that it was delivered to Clark's communicator, but there was no reaction from his seated visitor.

Bruce emerged from the storage area with a first-aid box. "Found it!" he announced. "Now, let's take your temperature." Bruce held out a digital thermometer towards his visitor's mouth. "Be very careful with this, it's easy to break." The patient nodded enthusiastically, and slowly closed his mouth around the device.

"While we wait, I'm going to take your pulse." As Bruce took hold of not-quite-Clark's hand and put a finger on the wrist, he realized that he didn't know what normal-Clark's pulse felt like, or even whether he had one. But it didn't matter, since the purpose of the whole charade was to give him time to think.

If this was a malfunctioning Clark, then why would he be wearing an amateurish version of the Super-suit, and not have his communicator? On the other hand, if this was a copy, or clone of Clark, then why wasn't he identical? Digital data could be duplicated perfectly. Perhaps the nanobots didn't operate on digital logic but used fuzzy quantum storage of some kind. Though that seemed like an aspect that Barbara would definitely have mentioned. Bruce went back and forth a few times, but none of the possibilities seemed to make sense. More information was needed.

Bruce took back the thermometer, studied it carefully, then slowly nodded. "You have the flu."

The patient looked confused, "Me am never sick."

"This isn't normal flu, it's space-flu. That's why people run away from you – they don't want to catch it too."

"Oh no!"

"Don't worry, space-flu only lasts for a few days."

"Me am stay here until better!"

"Yes, that seems like a good ide-"

_THUWP_

Clark appeared in the cave. The imperfect clone hypothesis appeared to be correct. The real Clark looked reassuringly normal in his checked shirt and jeans.

"Hi Steve!" said Bruce, putting on a big smile. "I'd like you to meet Clark."

"Hello Steve!" said the clone of Clark.

"Uh... " The real Clark looked to Bruce, then back at the clone. "Hi... Clark?" He stepped forward and offered his hand to shake.

"No touch!" said the clone. "Me am gotten space-flu!"

"Oh, okay then," said Clark, stepping back. "Thanks for the heads up."

The clone leaned towards Bruce and whispered loudly. "Why let Steve in secret cave?"

"Steve is a good friend of mine," said Bruce, talking normally. "You don't need to whisper."

"Bruce not have friend, only team."

Bruce glanced at Clark, who was holding back a smirk. "I let Steve in here because he might join the team."

"What can him do?" The clone stood up and stared at Clark. "And why him look like me? Him not strong like me."

"I didn't say he was."

"Me am top of team!" the clone was getting angry. "Him not have secret suit." The clone strode forward, grabbed Clark's shirt, and tore it open, revealing part of the blue Super-suit underneath with its characteristic red and yellow logo. The clone stood back, aghast.

"No! ME am Super-Clark!" He jumped forward and swung a fist at Clark, connecting with his jaw. There was a loud crack, and Clark stumbled backwards.

"See!" shouted the clone. "Him weak! Me am strong!" He turned and pointed a finger at Bruce, while slowing rising into the air. "Bad friend! Always sneaky. Me am not stay here. Luthor smart too. Him fix space-flu!"

The clone turned and flew towards the cave exit, bumping into the wall and dislodging a small chunk of rock. A cry of "Dumb secret cave!" was heard as the clone disappeared through the exit.

Bruce ran over to Clark and helped him up. "Are you okay?"

"I haven't been hit like that since I was a kid." Clark rubbed his jaw. "I'd forgotten what it was like."

"I did wonder why you just stood there. He telegraphed it well in advance."

"Geez, thanks for the help." Clark grinned and rolled his eyes. "So who, or what, is he?"

"I don't know. But I planted a tracker on him while I was pretending to take his pulse. Let's see where he goes."

Bruce pulled up a map on his computer, and they watched a dot move erratically as Clark's clone veered about in the air, heading in the direction of Metropolis. The dot stopped about 50 miles out from the city, then moved around for a few minutes in haphazard circles, before briefly speeding up and abruptly disappearing.

"He probably went underground," said Bruce. A theory began to form. He zoomed in on the map where the tracking dot was last seen. The area looked like a rundown industrial park with a few rusty metal rooftops. "Do you recognize this place?"

"No," said Clark.

Bruce searched online and found some photos taken from street level. "Are you sure?"

"I really don't think I've ever been there."

Bruce sighed. That was all he needed to confirm the theory. He turned to Clark.

"We just met Luthor's plan B."

* * *

Bruce stood on a hilltop near the clone's last known location, and held up Ray Palmer's scanner. A cluster of dots moved around on his laptop screen, mirroring Clark's position as he flew around the area. Clark was dressed as Superman, and Bruce was in his reconnaissance outfit.

"These buildings are all empty." Clark's voice sounded in Bruce's earpiece.

"No surprise," replied Bruce. "As far as I can tell, LexCorp is the first tenant in years. Before that it was abandoned."

"These are _all_ empty though," said Clark. "No sign of the clone, or Luthor, or anyone else."

"Try looking for hidden basements."

Bruce switched his laptop to show the view from a tiny camera on Clark's earpiece. The picture abruptly changed every time Clark moved at super-speed. Bruce felt a little uneasy about what they were doing. It was a spur of the moment decision to investigate the area where the clone – or the spaceship – might be, but Luthor currently had the initiative, and Bruce was playing catch up. If he delayed while coming up with a more coherent plan, and Luthor had tracked the clone's recent movements to the cave and then back to this area, then Luthor might realize that his location was compromised and relocate the entire operation. Then they would be back to square one.

"Strange," said Clark. "There's an area under this one that I can't see into."

"I expect it's that one then. Luthor would have taken precautions. Perhaps it's lined with lead."

Clark landed outside the building. "Do you think I should knock on the door?"

"Couldn't hurt."

Clark knocked.

"Who there?" the clone's voice emanated faintly from within.

"It's um… Steve." said Clark, loudly. There was a brief commotion, then the door opened.

"Go away, Steve." said the clone.

Clark slowly took a few steps back from the door. "I'm sorry to bother you. I'm looking for Lex Luthor. Is he there?"

The clone shook his head. "No, him got important meeting."

"Do you know when he'll be back?"

"No, him just tell me wait."

"I see." Clark rubbed his chin. "Do you always do what Luthor says?"

The clone's frowned. "Not true. Steve tell lies!"

Clark gently put his hands up towards the clone. "Take it easy, I didn't mean it like that."

"Me am do own thing all the time. Me am not stay if not want. And me am not take it easy if not want!"

"Careful," said Bruce, into his comm. The clone was clearly getting combative. "Maybe try to get him talking about Metropolis, or Kansas."

But before Clark could implement Bruce's suggestion, the clone strode forward and pointed angrily at Clark's earpiece. "Who there?!" he shouted. "Is sneaky Brucey voice!"

"Uh…" Clark wasn't sure how to respond. "You've got good hearing."

"Me am Super-Clark, can do anything. You weak copy."

"If you say so."

"Yeah, me am say so! You give back secret suit now." The clone grabbed at Clark's waist and tried to pull the Super-suit off him, but he failed to get a grip on the sheer material. Clark reflexively brushed the clone's hands away.

Watching, via the camera, Bruce could see the clone winding up for a punch. Remembering how Clark had been caught off guard last time, he quickly said "Incoming" into his comm, and even then he still had enough time to see the clone's fist get closer and closer. Without super-speed, the clone's movements were similar to those of a normal slightly clumsy human, and Bruce's years of combat training made them seem painfully slow.

Just as the punch was about to connect, there was a faint _THWUP_ as Clark shifted several feet sideways. The clone stumbled forward, unbalanced by the unexpected lack of impact, then he swiveled around to face Clark.

"Cheat!" he shouted. "You have Bruce help!" The clone dived at Clark, only to meet another _THWUP_ and some empty air. The clone's dive became forward flight, which then curved upwards for several seconds, until he stopped, hovering in the air, and turned once more to face Clark. The clone pointed down towards him. "Stay still!"

"Please stop attacking me," Clark shouted up at the clone. "I don't want to fight you."

"Of course, 'cuz you weak!" shouted the clone triumphantly, then he angled downwards and flew at Clark, fists outstretched. Clark sighed, and his next _THWUP_ took him some distance away. The clone crashed into the ground where Clark had been standing, and then got up and roared in frustration. He flew over to a nearby building and punched it, demolishing an entire wall in one blow.

"This is futile," said Bruce. "He's not going to calm down. We should leave."

Clark sighed again, then flew over to within earshot of the clone. "I'm sorry you don't like me. Perhaps we can talk again another time."

"No!" replied the clone. "Me am fight you!"

"Okay then," said Clark. "Bye for now."

_THWUP_

Clark appeared beside Bruce, and they both watched from afar as the clone destroyed another building while shouting vague insults at "Steve". Then a second _THWUP_ took them both back to Bruce's cave.

"That was a waste of time," said Clark, sitting down dejectedly at the table.

"Not completely," said Bruce. "We've confirmed that Luthor is responsible for the clone, or at least is heavily involved somehow, and we know where the clone is currently based. We also now know that the clone has your hearing abilities too, but doesn't have your speed. Or at least he doesn't know how to use it if he does. Lastly, according to Palmer's scanner, the clone's nanobots have the same energy signatures as yours."

"Does any of that help, though?"

"Perhaps. I'll have to consider what to do next."

Clark picked up his normal clothes, and in the blink of an eye was wearing them. "I'll head off then." He was just about to leave, when his phone pinged. He glanced at it, then did a double take. "That's not good."

"What's up?" said Bruce.

"I just got a news alert." Clark turned his phone around, to show Bruce the message.

_Superman destroys fighter jet_

Bruce stared at it for a moment, then brought up a live news feed on his computer screen.

_... moments ago, not far from Metropolis. Eyewitnesses on the ground say they saw Superman fly underneath the jet and punch it multiple times, before flying away. The plane disintegrated but the pilot managed to eject and has been taken to hospital. An Air Force spokesperson has refused to comment ..._

The report was accompanied by shaky camera-phone footage which appeared to corroborate the story.

"The clone must still be angry," said Bruce.

"We have to stop him."

"Agreed."

"But how?"

"Actually, I may have found a way, but it will require some coordination."

* * *

"We have a problem," Bruce announced to the hastily assembled team.

"No kidding," said Victor. "How can there be another Superman?"

"Clark doesn't have an organic body. He's a computer-generated projection. So you can make a duplicate of him by copying the program."

"Whoa!" said Barry.

"That's ridiculous!" exclaimed Diana.

"Please, everyone." Bruce held up his hands. "There's quite a lot of base facts to get through. I'll lay it all out and then we can discuss after that."

Diana folded her arms. "Fine."

"So," Bruce began. "Clark arrived in a spaceship from another planet as a baby, except he wasn't a baby as such. He comes from an alien society that lived as virtual simulations of their old biological forms, but something went wrong and his father sent him here, with a collection of nanobots to project his form as a human into our real world so that he could interact with us. We're not really too clear on why."

"Oh yeah, that message…" said Victor. Then caught Bruce frowning at him, and mimicked zipping his mouth shut.

"At some point when Clark was growing up, the nanobots started giving him super-powers. We're not sure why that happened either, but it led to him becoming the man that we all know. Then, probably around a year ago, Luthor discovered the nanobots, and worked out Clark's true nature, and decided he wanted nanobots of his own. But he can't alter them. So he went after the next best thing, which is Clark's spaceship, in the hope that it can help him modify, or at least understand, the nanobots. However, he can't operate the spaceship without Clark, who refuses to help."

Bruce pulled up the picture of the nanobot on his computer screen.

"It turns out that are two levels to the nanobot code. The operating system level is immutable, that's what governs all the bot's own features such as flying and super-speed. Then there's a data level which contains… well, it contains Clark, and that layer can be changed, presumably because the data changes as Clark grows and learns. Luthor has evidently found a way to isolate some nanobots and edit their version of that layer, and he has tried to create a version of Clark that will operate the spaceship for him. However, he clearly doesn't have fine-grained control, because the version that he created has some problems. In fact, it's confused, angry, and prone to violence."

Bruce played a short snippet of footage recorded from Clark's earpiece camera, during his last conversation with the clone, for the team to see the clone's behavior. Then he switched back to the photo of the nanobot.

"We believe there is a way to destroy the nanobots. There appears to be some self-destruct code baked into the operating system. When this sensor here sees a chemical compound called krypton oxide, it triggers the self-destruct. We can potentially use it to destroy Luthor's clone of Clark, by destroying his nanobots. However, there are some issues to address. Firstly, krypton oxide is very unstable so it would be challenging to get some into the vicinity of the clone, only a speedster could do it reliably. Secondly, the two speedsters we have both depend on the nanobots for their own speed, so they'd have to move out of range before the compound was released. Thirdly, depending on how you look at it, the clone is a being in its own right, and is as alive as Clark. In fact, it thinks it is Clark. So destroying it, or killing him, could be considered unethical."

Bruce leaned back against his desk. "I have my own views on what we should do, but what do you all think?"

"I think it sounds like nonsense," said Diana. "Clark is obviously not just a computer program. You must have got that part wrong."

"No, Diana," said Clark, softly. "He doesn't have it wrong."

"But look," Diana prodded Clark on the shoulder. "There you are, real as can be."

"We shouldn't get bogged down in metaphysics," said Bruce. "Let's just assume that, for whatever reason, the clone of Clark exists, and is dangerous, and we have the ability to stop him."

"Are you sure about the krypton oxide thing?" said Barry. "Because it's basically impossible to make, isn't it?"

"Not impossible," said Bruce. "I have a source available, though it would require some prep time."

"Yeah man," said Victor. "Of course Batman can make krypton oxide. What were you thinking?"

Barry laughed.

"There is still the question of the delivery method." said Bruce. "However, we should first decide whether we're actually going to use it. Normally I'm against killing, but the clone has Clark's super-strength, so containing him would be difficult. In theory some kind of steel-reinforced lead chamber might be able to hold him for a while, but he would eventually break out, and be angrier than ever. Not to mention that trapping him indefinitely in solitary confinement is arguably worse than death. So our only realistic options are to let the clone continue, or stop him, permanently."

"We should stop him," said Diana. "If this imposter is daring to copy Clark, he has no honor and should face the consequences."

"Can't we reason with him?" said Barry.

"We tried that twice," said Bruce. "Both times he attacked Clark. The second time he smashed several buildings and a plane. The pilot of the plane was lucky, but the next one might not be. I don't think talking to the clone a third time will go any better. Luthor has probably been feeding him lies ever since he created him."

"How do you know that Luthor created him?" said Barry.

"The clone has at least some of Clark's knowledge and memories up to the point in time when he was cloned, because he already knew me, and how to get here. Whereas anything that the clone knows that Clark doesn't know must be something that he learned after he diverged from Clark. When he flew away from us the first time, he mentioned Luthor, and then went straight to a location that Clark didn't recognize, but which LexCorp recently rented. So the most logical explanation is that Luthor created the clone, probably in that same place, by editing a group of nanobots."

"If that is true," said Diana. "Then we destroy those nanny-bots. Problem solved."

"Did you see that video?" said Victor. "Mentally he's like a child. We can't just turn him off."

"He's not a child, he's a computer program that looks like Clark, it's the same as turning off a computer. There's nothing wrong with that."

"What if it was a robot that looked like Clark?" said Victor.

"Same thing," said Diana.

"Oh yeah? And what if it was half robot, half man. Would you turn him off then?" Victor's bionic eye flashed angrily, while his other eye stared at Diana.

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, we're not talking about you, we're talking about a copy of Clark. And if Luthor had made a copy of you using tiny computers I'd be saying the same thing."

"Yeah, but he couldn't do that because I'm not a computer program in the first place."

"This is not a productive debate," said Bruce, raising his voice. "Diana, I think you've established your position clearly enough. Victor, I am sympathetic to your viewpoint, but bear in mind that it's not enough just to say that killing the clone is wrong. You need to suggest an alternative course of action that we could take instead."

"I wanna talk to him," said Victor.

"We tried that."

"Yeah, but you guys don't know what it's like to wake up one morning feeling different and alone. I do. I might be able to get through to him."

Bruce raised an eyebrow. He couldn't remember a day when he hadn't woken up feeling different and alone, but he knew that from Victor's perspective he had lived a life of privilege and luxury, and so Victor was unlikely to react well to an expression of emotional honesty at this precise moment. Clark no doubt also had some things to say on the subject of feeling different and alone, but again, not from the angle that Victor meant it. In any case, none of that was relevant to the matter at hand.

"You have a point," said Bruce. "The clone sees Clark as a threat to his identity, and me as untrustworthy, but he has no reason not to treat you as a friend."

"Okay then," said Victor. "I'll talk to him."

"I'd still like to establish a backup plan. We'll try it your way first, but if that doesn't work, we'll turn off the clone's nanobots. It will require some delicate timing though. The krypton oxide compound is manufactured at laser-cooled cryogenic temperatures, and even liquid nitrogen can only keep it stable for a few minutes. Once it's made we'll have a short window during which we can deploy it."

"What do we do with it then? Just chuck it at the clone?" said Barry.

"Essentially, yes. Our experiments show that the nanobots can detect the compound up to a meter away, as long as they have a clear line of sight. Fortunately it appears that the clone doesn't have super-speed, since he's never used it, even when trying to fight Clark. Ideally we would use a timed release or proximity trigger, but we don't have time to create such a mechanism. Instead we can take a more low-tech route and put the compound inside an opaque glass vial, then either you or Clark engage the clone in conversation, while the other throws the vial at him. When it's just about to hit, you both move to a safe distance so that your nanobots don't see the krypton oxide when the vial breaks open on contact."

"Couldn't you or Diana throw it?" said Barry.

"The vial has to be thrown so that it hits the clone's skin with enough momentum that the nanobots' force field hardens in response and shatters the glass. So we have to aim for the clone's face or hands, since his hair or clothing might cushion the impact too much. If Diana or I miss, we can't try again, whereas if you or Clark throw it, and see that it's gone past him, or is about to hit him in the wrong place, you can go and grab the vial out of the air and try again."

"I wouldn't miss," said Diana.

"There's no telling what would happen in the heat of the moment. The clone might move just at the point when you're throwing."

"I can hit a rabbit with a stone from 50 yards away," said Diana. "I wouldn't miss."

"I daresay that's true," said Bruce. "Nonetheless, the ideal plan is for Barry or Clark to throw it."

"Uh… the ideal plan is for me to make friends with the clone," said Victor.

"Yes, of course."

Bruce outlined the remaining logistical details, and the team agreed to reconvene the following morning. As they were leaving, Victor turned to Clark.

"What's your favorite kind of ice cream?"

"Pistachio. Why, are you buying?"

"Yeah, I guess I am."


	8. Friends and enemies

The following morning, after receiving notice from Ray Palmer that he had finished making a fresh sample of krypton oxide, Bruce signaled for the team to assemble at his previous vantage point overlooking the area where the clone was known to inhabit. They were all dressed for action in their respective super costumes, except for Bruce, who was once again in his reconnaissance outfit.

Once they were all present, Victor struck out on his own towards the clone's building, carrying a plastic bag.

"It's the door on the left side," said Bruce, into his comm. "If you knock, he'll hear it."

"Okay", said Victor. "Switching off audio." He knocked on the door, and a few seconds later the clone opened it.

"Oh, hello Victor!" said the clone.

"Hey Clark," said Victor. "How's it going?"

"Me am good," said the clone. Then he looked around, suspiciously. "Why you here? Where Bruce?"

"Ah, we're in public, we're supposed to use our codenames, remember?"

"Right, me am sorry. So where Batsman? And where… me am not know Steve secret name. Me am call him Weak-Steve-man."

"Hah, well, they're not here. I thought I'd drop in and see how you were doing."

"Batsman smart. Him always know what happen. Him sneak and listen."

"No, really man, he ain't here. Look, I brought ice cream." Victor reached into the plastic bag, and produced two wrapped cones, a pistachio one for the clone, and strawberry for himself.

The clone's face lit up. "Me am not have ice cream in long time. Secret laboritee only have boring food." He reached out and took the pistachio one, tearing off the wrapper, and taking a big bite.

"Hmm… bit warm, is melty."

"Yeah, sorry about that."

The clone grinned. "Me am have trick!" He held the ice cream out and carefully blew on it, his mouth making a big o-shape. Lines of frost quickly appeared all over the cone.

"Super cold breath, huh?" said Victor. "Neat."

"Me am remember one time use trick at home when mom freezer broke."

A message appeared from the group comm feed, automatically converted from speech to text on Victor's internal visual display, so that the clone wouldn't hear it.

**_Superman: _**It was me that did that, not him.

**_Overseer: _**He mentioned a laboratory, it's probably in that same building. Cyborg, can you get him away from the door?

Victor looked around. "There ain't much to do around here," he said to the clone. "You wanna play a game of catch?" Victor reached into his bag and brought out a soft squishy ball. He hoped that it was light enough that even if the clone threw it with all his super-strength, air resistance would quickly slow it down enough that Victor might have a chance of catching it.

"Sure!" said the clone, then he leaned forward and whispered. "Tell truth, Luthor very boring too."

Victor laughed, put down the bag, and activated his jump jets. Dust blew across the ground as he rose up into the air with a loud whoosh, then flew backwards away from the clone. "Catch!" he shouted, and threw the ball over the clone's head.

The clone flew straight up and easily grabbed the ball. Victor continued flying backwards, as the clone threw the ball, which sailed past Victor.

"Aw, man," said Victor, under his breath, as he turned and flew after the ball, catching it just before it landed on the ground. He flew back up, and threw the ball as hard as he could, aiming over the clone's head.

Beneath them, two almost imperceptible streaks crossed the ground, as Barry and Clark, with their arms around the shoulders of Bruce and Diana respectively, moved at superspeed in through the door that the clone had left open.

Inside, another open doorway led to some steps downwards, a short corridor, and then a large bright room full of equipment.

Behind a thick plexiglass window in one of the walls was Luthor. He made a hat-tipping gesture to Bruce, who frowned. Then Luthor pressed a button on his side of the glass, and his voice came in over a loudspeaker.

"Mr. Wayne, how delightful to see you with all your friends."

Bruce inwardly winced at the use of his real name. If any of Luthor's staff were on site, they might easily be able to put two and two together. On the other hand, it could just be a ploy by Luthor to throw him off guard. Either way, it was low on Bruce's list of current concerns.

"You don't have any control over your copy of Superman, do you."

"Straight to the point, I see. And yes, I'm afraid you're right. I intended to make it more suggestible, but it appears that its intellect has suffered as a result."

"It's dangerous, you have to shut it down, or set the nanobots back to their original state."

"Hah! While it would be marvelous to have two of Mr. Kent flying about the place, I'm afraid I can't do that. The force field that they collectively project makes the swarm within quite impervious to interference, once activated."

Bruce felt a moment of unease – Palmer had only tested the krypton oxide on lone nanobots, not on Clark himself. Perhaps the clone's nanobots wouldn't be able to see it through their projection of the clone, and Bruce's plan to destroy them would fail. Then he remembered that it was their only available plan, and they had nothing to lose by trying.

"What you're doing is immoral, Luthor." said Clark, advancing towards the window.

"It's on your head, Mr. Kent," said Luthor. "If Mr. Wayne had let you assist me, all this could have been avoided."

"I make my own decisions," said Clark, sounding annoyed.

"Don't let him get to you." said Bruce, quietly.

At that moment, there was a banging sound from the entrance to the building. Victor's voice came through their group comm. "Hey guys, I think he heard-"

The clone burst into the room. "Weak-Steve-man!" he shouted, pointing at Clark, then at Bruce. "Sneaky Batsman!" He noticed Diana and Barry. "Oh, hello." The clone's eyes narrowed. "Are you side with them or me?"

"We're on the side of justice!" said Diana.

"Uh…" said Barry. "She means that we're not on anyone's side as such. Let's not fight or anything."

"Me am fight if want!" the clone said, angrily. "Me am make own decishums too!"

Victor ran in through the door behind the clone, and the clone spun around to face him. "You lie! Batsman here with you!"

"Hey, whoa, it's not like that," said Victor.

The clone turned back to face Clark. "Weak-Steve-man and all his friends still no can beat me." A sly grin slowly spread across his face. Then he said, almost in a whisper. "Me am been practicing." His face contorted into a strange grimace of concentration…

_THWUP_

A loud crack immediately followed, as the clone seemingly teleported in front of Clark with his fist impacting on Clark's face. Clark staggered backwards and fell to his knees, concussed from the super-speed hit. It had been far more powerful than the first time that the clone had hit him. The clone turned around to face the others and grinned again, even wider.

"Who next?"

The room erupted into chaos. Diana immediately leapt towards the clone, shouting at the top of her lungs. Barry became a periodic blur, moving back and forth across the room unpredictably, and Victor sprouted extra bits of armor covering his face, while his right arm morphed into a sonic cannon.

Bruce ran around the edge of the room towards Clark, holding his hand over his comm mouthpiece, to shield it from the noise. "Superman, we need you."

As Diana got close to the clone, she feinted right, then swung up from her left, hitting the clone in the side, where his liver would be, if he had a liver. There was a loud crunch, as her hand impacted on the clone's unyielding torso. She howled in pain, and retreated a few steps.

"Don't hit him hard." said Bruce. "Dig in with your fingertips." He didn't know whether this would work, but based on Barry's prior observations of Clark's skin, a direct assault definitely wouldn't.

Barry began throwing objects at the clone, mainly hoping to distract him, while Victor moved to one side, trying to get a clear shot with his cannon. Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce could see Luthor through his window, laughing, though no sound made it through the glass.

"Get up!" Bruce passed by Clark and approached the clone from behind. "We won't last long without you." He reached up and put his hands on the clone's shoulders, pulling backwards while pushing his knees into the back of the clone's knees. A takedown move that used steady pressure rather than impact, Bruce hoped that the clone would be susceptible to it.

He was not.

The clone spun around and swung at Bruce. It was easy to dodge. Bruce's wrists made contact with the clone's forearms, and his close quarters kung-fu training took over. From this position, face to face with an untrained opponent, he could avoid practically any attack using sticky-hands reflexes, but it was only a delaying tactic, since in this particular case hitting back would achieve nothing.

"Superman!" said Bruce, gliding back and forth out of the way of the clone's wild swings. "You're not really hurt. The nanobots are simulating the pain." Bruce didn't know whether this was technically true or not. Depending on the emulation's fidelity to human physiology, realistic neural damage might or might not be applied to reflect head trauma. Either way, at this moment in time it was useful for Clark to believe that he had been unaffected by the blow.

The clone scowled in confusion. "Sneaky Batsman! Why me am no can hit you?" The clone spread his arms wide and pushed forward, trying to grab Bruce around the waist. Bruce retreated, keeping pace, but aware that he would soon back up against a wall and then he would be trapped.

A deafening sound blasted across the room. Victor had come up to one side of the clone and levelled his sonic cannon at the clone's head. The clone halted his advance and bent over, clapping his hands over his ears. Bruce quickly moved out of range, also with his hands over his ears.

The noise stopped.

"Sorry man, but look, you gotta chill." said Victor.

Without any warning, the clone straightened up and elbowed Victor in the chest. There was a loud metallic clang, and Victor was sent flying backwards headfirst towards a wall.

_THWUP_

Barry caught Victor before he hit the wall, though he was far too heavy for Barry to support, and they both fell to the ground.

By this time, Diana had found a long metal pole, and vigorously attacked the clone, jabbing at his torso and swinging at his legs. The blows had no discernible effect. The clone looked angry, but instead of advancing on Diana his face contorted into a grimace. Bruce braced himself for a possible impact. Diana was the clone's most likely target, though even she was unlikely to survive a full-on punch at super-speed.

_THWUP_

Clark appeared directly behind the clone, grabbing him in a bear hug, pinning his arms and lifting him off the ground. Bruce relaxed, and Diana dropped the pole, repeatedly opening and closing her left hand, still injured from her initial attack. Barry was already on his feet, but Victor stayed down. His metal chest had a large dent in it, and he wasn't moving.

The clone thrashed about and shouted belligerently. Then he paused, and contorted his face in concentration. _THWwWw… _His head, shoulders and legs were briefly a blur as he tried to wriggle away at super-speed, but Clark held firm. _THWwWw… _

"We have to use the compound," said Bruce. "Being friendly doesn't work."

"I agree!" said Diana.

"I guess you're right," said Barry. "I'll go fetch it. Be right back."

_THWUP_

Bruce started a mental countdown. By now Barry would be in Palmer's lab, and Palmer would start transferring the compound from its cryogenic chamber to a vial, and placing that in a container of liquid nitrogen, ready for Barry to bring back. The whole process should take 30 seconds or so, which given the current situation, was quite a long time.

Bruce glanced over at the two super-beings. Clark's grip on the clone seemed secure for now, but the clone was still alternating between speed and physical exertion to try to extricate himself.

"Me am get free!" the clone screamed. "Me am strongest!"

"Superman, are you okay?" Bruce spoke quietly into his comm.

"Piece of cake," said Clark, his voice was muffled from his face being pressed sideways into the clone's back, and he was clearly using a lot of effort to keep the clone restrained. The clone had now stopped struggling, and was repeatedly scrunching his face in concentration and staring at Bruce, but this time there was no super-speed. He looked like he was trying to activate another power though. It reminded Bruce of something, though he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Something to do with the nanobots, and Clark being angry. Nanobots clustering around the eyes…

"Take cover!" Bruce shouted. He grabbed a nearby table threw it onto its side, facing the clone. "Eye beams!" he yelled, overturning a second table, and sending laptops and various equipment clattering to the floor. The flimsy tables wouldn't stop a super-laser beam, but if you were hiding behind one then at least the clone wouldn't know where to look.

That is, assuming he hadn't developed x-ray vision too.

Bruce was just about to go for a third table, when he felt a heavy impact from one side and was violently thrown towards the ground. Diana had flung herself towards him, just as twin lines of red light shot out of the clone's eyes, carving a deep cut in the wall behind where Bruce had been standing. Diana and Bruce landed on the floor behind one of the tables. A second set of red lines immediately cut through the table at Bruce's head. Diana thrust her right arm in the way, her metal bracer absorbing the light, and growing hot. Then the light beam disappeared, and appeared again, puncturing the table in a different place, missing them entirely. The clone evidently didn't have x-ray vision, that first shot had just been a good guess.

Steam rose from Diana's bracer, as the heat burned her arm. Diana gritted her teeth and frantically pawed at the bracer with her injured left hand, until Bruce grabbed it and yanked it off her.

As soon as Clark realized what was happening, he lifted the clone around, so that they were facing away from the tables, towards Luthor. A look of panic crossed Luthor's face, and he jabbed at a button on his console. A screen immediately swept across the window, hiding him from view.

"Turn back round, stupid-Steve-man!" shouted the clone. _THWwWw… _Bruce glanced over the top of the table. The clone was twisting left and right, causing Clark to stagger back and forth. The rest of the team were relatively safe, as long as Clark could keep his balance.

_THWUP_

Barry appeared next to Bruce, on his knees, one hand on a cylindrical metal container, the size of a small fire extinguisher.

"I got the compound." Barry looked back and forth at Bruce and Diana. "Why are you hiding behind these tables?"

"The clone can fire eye beams now." replied Bruce.

"Oh man."

Bruce glanced over the top of the table again. The clone had stopped struggling and was instead ranting about how Weak Steve couldn't hold him forever. This was true, they needed to act decisively, and soon.


	9. Balance of probabilities

Bruce reviewed their options. The clock was ticking – they only had a short while before the compound would evaporate within its container and become useless. However, now that Bruce had the container in his hand, he felt slightly more at ease. Victor wouldn't want them to use it without exhausting all other avenues, and they had a brief window in which to explore alternatives. Bruce spoke into his comm.

"Superman, can you hold him for another few minutes? I want to see if Luthor planned ahead for this."

"Go ahead."

"Flash, can you find out if Luthor is still in the building?"

"Sure."

_THWUP_

Bruce took out his phone – the cell reception was weak, but workable. Bruce didn't have Luthor's number, but his assistant had emailed Luthor's assistant about shareholder meetings, and Bruce had been cc'd. Bruce dialed the phone number in her email signature, and a female voice answered.

"Lex Luthor's office."

"Hi, this is Bruce Wayne, I'd like to speak to Lex."

"I'm afraid Mr. Luthor is unavailable. Can I take a message?"

"The thing is, Stephanie – it is Stephanie, right?" Bruce went into full arrogant playboy mode, "It's kind of important. I've heard some troubling rumors about LexCorp's financial results, and some of my own shareholders are hassling me, and, you know how it is."

"Did you say Bruce Wayne… uh… the CEO of Wayne Enterprises?"

"Yep, that's me. Rather than feed the rumor mill I thought I'd talk to Lex. Get the facts straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak."

"One moment please, I'll see if Mr. Luthor will take your call."

The on-hold music seemed offensively banal, juxtaposed with the damaged walls, scattered workbenches and his injured teammates. Bruce looked around the room, to see if there were any clues about Luthor's work, but could only see standard lab equipment. Then Stephanie's chirpy voice wrenched his attention back to his phone.

"Thank you for holding, I'll put you through now." There was a brief moment of silence, then Luthor's voice came through. He sounded amused.

"Mr. Wayne, a pleasure as always."

"Do you have any contingency plan for containing the clone?"

"Of course I do, I'm not some kind of irresponsible buffoon."

"How does it work? Can you activate it?"

"I'm afraid I'm on my way out, I'm sure you can understand why. Are you in a particular hurry, Mr. Wayne?"

"Quit stalling. Can we use it or not?"

"Haha, very well." Luthor's smirk was audible. "In the test chamber on the floor below you'll find a cage lined with nanobots reprogrammed as force field generators. In theory they should be able to hold Mr. Kent or his clone, but the truth is I never tested the full configuration, since imprisoning the clone might have led him to thinking unfavorably of me. I'm happy for you to play bad cop though."

"Stay on the line."

Bruce pressed the mute button on his phone, and switched to his comm.

"Flash, have you found anything that looks like a test chamber containing a person-sized cage?"

"Yeah, that sounds familiar. One sec… " There was the briefest of pauses. "Yep, I guess that's this thing."

_THWUP._ Barry appeared in a doorway next to Luthor's closed window.

"It's down here."

Bruce grabbed the metal container that contained the compound. "Take us there."

_THWUP_

Bruce found himself in a room slightly smaller than the previous one, it felt deeper underground, but not by much. There was a large wire mesh cage in one corner, connected by a mass of cables to a console in the opposite corner. The cage was big enough to fit several people comfortably, and included a chair, perhaps with the expectation that someone might spend an extended period of time inside it.

_THWUP_

Barry and Diana appeared next to him.

"Superman, can you bring the clone to us?" Bruce hoped that Clark would be able to use his x-ray vision to locate them easily.

_THWUP _

Clark and the clone appeared, facing away, just to be on the safe side. Bruce switched back to his phone, and put it on speaker so that the others could hear.

"We're next to the cage. What do we do now?"

"I'm not at your beck and call, Mr. Wayne, and I don't take kindly to being treated as your assistant."

Bruce had guessed that Luthor would want to see if his super-prison worked, and also potentially end up with the clone secured in his laboratory. So Bruce could probably have been a lot ruder and still kept Luthor in the conversation. However, it was probably best to soothe his ego a little, for the sake of keeping things moving.

"Sorry Lex, but we don't have much time. Could you please explain how to use this device that you've created?"

"Hmm… I can see that you're in the correct room, that's a good start."

Of course, Luthor had a security camera feed to wherever he currently was. It was what Bruce would have done too.

"The console to your left has the on-switch. It's a simple toggle. Just ask Mr. Kent to walk into the cage, then close the door and flick the switch."

"We don't want Superman trapped in there too."

"I'm afraid there's no other way. The generators take a while to spool up, and the door needs to be closed to complete all the circuits."

"It's fine." Clark walked over to the cage and stepped inside. "It will be easier for the clone if I'm in here too, and you can always let me out later."

Bruce didn't like the idea of trapping Clark in Luthor's device, but decided that there was a low probability of it being permanent. Even if it was a trick of some kind, they could always turn the power off to get him out. And if they couldn't do that for some reason, there would be time to work out a solution.

He nodded at Diana, who was already standing by the cage door. She closed it, while Bruce located the switch on the console, and flipped it to on.

A low hum started, coming from somewhere else in the building, rising in pitch and intensity. Then patches of yellow light started to appear around the cage. A few seconds later the entire inner surface of the cage was glowing.

"Excellent." Luthor's voice came in over the phone. "I wonder, could you ask Mr. Kent to try tapping on the glass, so to speak."

Inside the cage, Clark let go of the clone, and started shaking his arms loosely by his side. "Oh boy." He sat down on the chair. "Gimme a sec, will you."

The clone spun round to face him. "You bad Steve!"

Clark held up both his hands. "I'm sorry, but you were very angry. I didn't want you to hurt any more of my friends."

"Me am still angry. Maybe me am hurt them now!"

Clark reached out and knocked on the force field that surrounded them. Each time he touched it the yellow glow momentarily increased intensity in response. "I don't think you'll be able to."

"What you mean?" The clone walked to the door and tried to push it open, but the force field responded to his touch too, and the door stayed put. The clone thumped his fists against the door, then strode over to one of the cage's walls and banged on that.

"This not possible," he muttered. He punched the wall as hard as he could, then bellowed in frustration. He turned his attention back to the door, and shoulder charged it, bouncing off with no effect. He repeated his assault a couple of times, then tried flying straight up in the air, smashing against the cage's ceiling, but no matter where he attacked, the surrounding force field momentarily flashed brighter, countering his impacts.

"Superb! If you'll pardon the pun." Luthor's voice was heard once more, but this time not over Bruce's phone. The occupants of the room turned and saw Luthor himself standing in the doorway. He was wearing what looked like a spandex bodysuit, covered in a grid of wires, including one around his forehead and another around his jaw, with a large square backpack feeding the wires.

"Apologies for the deception," Luthor continued, walking into the room. "I really was on my way out, but once I realized you might be inclined to test my super container for me, I doubled back."

"Luthor!" Diana strode over and reached out to lift him by the neck, but a yellow glow appeared where her hand made contact, and while she succeeded in lifting him up, he seemed not to be bothered by her firm grip.

"I'm afraid, my dear Wonder Woman, that any aggression towards me will be quite ineffective from here on out."

"Gah!" Diana threw Luthor towards a wall, and he crashed into it, leaving a man-sized dent, but he calmly stood back up.

"Fortunately, the inertia negators are working, otherwise you would be looking at a charge of aggravated assault. You are also currently trespassing so I will kindly request that you vacate these premises immediately."

"You can't keep Superman locked in a cage though," said Barry. "That's… uh… kidnapping."

"I think you mean false imprisonment. But in any case, that only applies to people. I am merely observing two 3D simulations in an experimental facility. There is nothing illegal about that. Now, as mentioned, I would like all of you to leave."

"Whatever," said Diana, "Superman is coming with us though. She motioned to Bruce and pointed at the control console. "Turn that thing off."

Bruce didn't move, he was racing through possibilities in his mind. Luthor had more or less played them a second time, although Clark had stepped willingly into the cage, and arguably having both Clark and the clone temporarily imprisoned was better than having the clone free to wreak havoc on the outside world. But was it only temporary?

"Ugh, I'll do it then." Diana started towards the console.

"Wait." Bruce held up a hand. "Do we really want to let the clone out?"

"Don't tell me you're on Luthor's side."

"We barely managed to stop the clone. Cyborg is down, you're injured, and Superman is tired. I don't think we can afford to let the clone out. At the very least we should ask Superman if he would prefer to be in the cage, or on 24-hour guard duty outside."

Bruce and Diana turned to Clark, who slowly shook his head. "He's right. It's safer for everyone if we stay put for now."

"No!" the clone yelled. "Me am not stay here!" He contorted his face in rage, and his eyes flashed red, as two beams of light shot out and hit the cage's door handle. A yellow glow sprang up to meet them. Bruce glanced at Luthor, who didn't appear concerned. No doubt he had tested the force fields with ordinary lasers, while designing the cage to hold Clark.

The clone started breathing heavily, as the effort of maintaining his eye beams took its toll. Outside the room, the hum of the generators could be heard increasing in pitch, more and more, until an alarm started blaring. The clone grinned widely. "Me am strongest!"

Then the lights in the room briefly dimmed, and the generator hum rapidly decreased until it was inaudible. The cage's force field was still active, but now the cage door had started to glow red hot. "Me am break free!" the clone shouted.

Clark hurriedly stood up, grabbing the clone around the waist, and tried to turn him away from the cage door, but had misjudged his hold and the clone's right arm was still free.

"No!" the clone yelled. He continued to stare intently at the door, his eye beams not letting up, as he swung his elbow backwards, hitting Clark in the head. Clark held on, but the clone hit him again, and the second time was enough for Clark to loosen his grip and for the clone to hit him one more time before pushing him away. Clark staggered backwards and fell against the rear wall of the cage, sliding down to the floor, while the clone ran forward, still staring at the lock, and pushed against the door. It slowly gave way, until the yellow force field sputtered out, and the clone burst through the cage triumphantly, panting, and blinking, his eye beams finally shut off.

"Me am… strongest…"

"Well done, Clark," said Luthor, failing to conceal the nervousness in his voice. "I … didn't think these bad people would be able to hold you."

The clone looked at Luthor, his eyes narrowed. "Me am not dumb. You build trap."

"Technically, yes." Luthor started slowly backing out of the room. "But it was for him, not you." He pointed at Clark, who was still sitting disorientated at the back of the cage.

A plan was forming in Bruce's mind. "Wonder Woman," he spoke quickly. "Stop Luthor from leaving. Flash, keep the clone occupied."

Diana ran to the doorway and stood in it with her arms folded. Bruce didn't know whether Luthor had super strength at this point, but even if he did, he wasn't a master of hand to hand combat and likely wouldn't be able to get past Diana for a while at least.

_THWUP_. Barry moved next to the clone. "Hey man, that was some cool stuff back there. You know, with the lasers… pew pew!"

Bruce was counting on Barry's own nanobots to keep him out of harm's way if the clone attacked. That would give him a moment to talk to Clark. Bruce still had the compound. Palmer said it would remain stable for about 30 minutes in the container, and it had only been 15 minutes since Barry brought it back. Even with a wide margin of error it should still be effective if they used it soon.

Just as Bruce was about to make his way over to Clark, the clone shouted something unintelligible, and swung at Barry. With a _THWUP_, Barry was out of range. The clone advanced for another attack, which Barry evaded with a second _THWUP_. The clone shouted again, and his eyes flashed red, there then followed a rapid sequence of _THWUPs_, as Barry's nanobots repositioned him to avoid the clone's eye beams, which were in turn retargeting Barry as fast as his eye saccades would allow.

Whether by luck, or Barry's own intervention, his nanobots moved him towards the far corner of the room, so that the clone's eye beams wouldn't strike anyone else. Each individual blast only lasted a few tenths of a second, but this was enough to leave a series of burn marks on the wall.

Bruce could see that Clark was finally getting to his feet. Bruce spoke into his comm. "Superman, we need you to restrain the clone again."

The clone's eye beams stopped, and he turned angrily towards Bruce.

_THWUP_

Barry appeared next to the clone and tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, why'd you stop? I thought we were having fun."

"Annoying Flashy Barry man!" The clone swung once more at Barry, who of course evaded.

"Annoying like fly. Me am swat fly!" The clone took a deep breath, and blew.

Perhaps the nanobots didn't register a high velocity wind as a threat to the human body, or perhaps they assumed that whatever threat may arise could be dealt with later, but neither the nanobots nor Barry reacted in time to prevent him being lifted off his feet by the clone's super breath and propelled towards the wall. Once in the air, having no purchase on the floor to effect a change in direction, neither Barry nor the nanobots could do anything to alter his trajectory, and without the inertia negation of Luthor's bots, he impacted against the wall arm first, shoulder second, and head third, crumpling into an unconscious heap.

"Finally no more buzzy buzz." The clone jeered. "Now me am deal with you!" He turned towards Bruce, but Clark was already flying out of the cage, and grappled the clone to the ground. There was a brief tussle, before Clark emerged on top, pinning the clone in an arm bar hold.

"I finally remembered some of my high school wrestling," said Clark, as the clone alternately writhed around and shouted in pain.

Bruce exhaled. The clone was secure again, for now. In theory Clark could hold him like that for a long time, but the clock was ticking on their 30-minute deadline. Bruce briefly considered attending to Barry, but decided that, like Victor, he would have to wait.

"We have to use the compound now."

"I agree," said Clark.

Bruce opened the container. Wisps of water vapor poured out from the top, indicating the freezing temperatures within. A pair of tongs was attached to the lid, and Bruce used them to fish around inside, until they closed around something small and solid.

"I have it."

Clark looked over at Luthor, and Bruce followed his gaze. "Tell me, Lex," said Clark, still holding the clone securely on the floor, "Did you manage to get components out of the nanobots to make your protective suit, or are you using whole ones?"

Bruce watched Luthor as he furrowed his brow, most likely wondering what motivated this question. His eyes darted over to Bruce's container, then back to Clark.

"Oh!" Luthor exclaimed, as realization dawned. "You've manufactured one of those noble gas formulas. Extraordinary! Though I'm afraid you will find it ineffective here, since I disabled that particular feature some time ago."

Clark looked back at Bruce. "What do you think?"

Bruce paused as he weighed the evidence. During Luthor's visit to the manor he had said he wasn't able to dissect the nanobots because they were self-repairing. And just previously he had said that the cage was lined with reprogrammed nanobots. While Bruce couldn't trust anything Luthor said, it was consistent, and it chimed with Barbara's finding that the lower levels of the bot code were read-only. So Luthor's most likely course of action was editing the upper level, which he had already done once to create the clone. Perhaps if he deleted most of that code altogether and kept a defensive mapping section intact, he could create a personal force shield. Or a cage. This would mean he was using intact nanobots, which would respond to the compound.

On the other hand, Luthor claimed he had bypassed that feature. Was this true? Bruce had seen the briefest flicker of panic on Luthor's face – a micro-expression – just as he had realized what was in the container. Could this have been a bluff? Luthor was a brilliant businessman and engineer, and had manipulated them several times, but he didn't have superhuman control over his instincts. On balance Bruce decided that there was a 75% probability that he was correctly seeing through Luthor's charade this time.

Bruce spoke carefully. "He's lying. All the nanobots still have the same vulnerability."

"A bold assertion, Mr. Wayne," Luthor smiled broadly. "But would you stake Mr. Kent's life on it?" Bruce's assessment rose to 80% – Luthor was a decent actor, he got all the big gestures right, but the small touches weren't quite there.

"I'm not planning to do that." Bruce's plan had crystallized – Diana would bring Luthor over, Bruce would bring the compound to the clone himself, and just before he shattered the vial, Clark would use super-speed to back away to a safe distance. Bruce was about to give the orders when Clark spoke again.

"Are you sure he's lying?"

Bruce considered. Given their situation, 80% counted as being sure. And they didn't have much to lose by trying the compound anyway, as long as Clark moved out of the way quickly enough.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"There's something I didn't tell you." The timbre of Clark's voice had changed. He sounded wistful. "I learned about it from the spaceship in Antarctica. The krypton formula is a failsafe that triggers all the nanobots at once. It's a safety feature my people added, in case something ever went wrong. It never did though."

Bruce frowned. All the nanobots? That would include Clark's. "But… if you flew far enough away, into space maybe…"

"There's nowhere for me to go, and as soon as I came back, we'd have the same problem all over again."

"Then we can't use it."

"I've made up my mind. This is the only way to keep everyone safe. Say goodbye to the others for me." Clark looked at Diana. "It was great knowing you all." Then back at Bruce. "Don't blame yourself. There was no other way."

"Clark! Wait! What are you-"

_THWUP_

Bruce felt a rush of wind around him, as the positions of Clark and the clone changed slightly. Clark was still looking at him, only now with a strange forlorn smile. Then Clark turned his head away.

Bruce looked down at the container's tongs, but they weren't in his hand anymore. Bruce looked up at Clark once more. He and the clone were motionless, as if somebody had pressed a pause button on them both. Then there was a bright flash, and they vanished, their now-empty clothes blown outwards. The silence was broken only by a tinkling sound as fragments of an opaque glass vial fell to the ground.


	10. Blame and consequences

Bruce blamed himself. It was poor planning.

They had gone in too quickly and unprepared. Bruce hadn't even thought of how to deal with the clone's laser vision. Or, to be precise, it had occurred to him that the clone might have the ability, despite never having used it before, but since they were pressed for time he hadn't considered what to do about it, and instead just hoped that it wouldn't be a problem.

Now other people were paying the price.

In a secluded part of the basement in S.T.A.R. labs, Barry and Bruce stood in an observation room, watching Victor's father scurrying around a table where Victor himself lay. He had never regained consciousness after being elbowed by the clone, although his father insisted that he was still alive. Barry had caught Victor and prevented a head-first wall impact, which would almost certainly have been fatal, but Victor's brain had still suffered tremendous shock from being buffeted around inside his metal skull. There was no telling when, if ever, he would recover.

"How are you adjusting to being normal again?" Bruce asked Barry.

"Heh, yeah, it's okay, I guess." Barry had regained consciousness shortly after the fight, albeit with a dislocated shoulder, and no more super-speed. "Sometimes I try to activate the speed out of habit. Then I realize I have to do everything the slow way again. Like brushing my teeth for two whole minutes every day. It takes ages now! How do people put up with it?"

They stood and watched Victor some more. Bruce's mind turned to Clark. He wondered how long Clark had spent during his final bout of super-speed. If he was a simulation, it explained why his experience of using the speed was different from Barry's. Clark's nanobots could just run his program at a faster clock speed, to effectively slow down time around him. It must have been very lonely though, moving around while the rest of the world waited, suspended mid-action.

Maybe he went to see his parents to say goodbye, knowing that they too would be frozen in place and never see him. Or maybe he couldn't take the risk that the clone's speed would somehow activate, or that perhaps the clone had anticipated that Clark might try letting go and coming back in an instant, and had pre-emptively entered super-speed himself, and waited…

No, the clone wasn't, to put it in his own words, "sneaky" enough to think of that. Bruce smiled affectionately, in some ways the clone had been an unfiltered window into what Clark had really thought of him – "the sneaky Batsman".

Bruce's smile faded. Clark was now gone. One might quibble over definitions, but to all intents and purposes he was dead. The nanobots that ran his emulation had all been destroyed.

During Bruce's post event analysis, Barbara had explained that the nanobots used a consensus protocol for their system-level triggers. If a voting majority of them saw the activation chemical, then they would send out a signal to all the others. So when Clark crushed the vial in his fist and released the krypton oxide, enough of his and the clone's nanobots saw it that the self-destruct was broadcast to all the other nanobots in the world, which included Barry's and Luthor's.

Poor planning again. Bruce hadn't thought to ask Barbara whether the signal was propagated to other nanobots when she first mentioned the chemical trigger mechanism. At the time Bruce had believed they didn't have anything to lose by using the compound, provided Clark was at a safe distance. Luthor must have been aware of its full effect though. It explained his otherwise odd remark about whether Bruce was ready to "stake Mr. Kent's life" on whether he was lying.

Clark had evidently known for a while that using the formula would mean his death sentence, but he hadn't said anything. It explained why he had been so quiet in the meetings when they had discussed it. He probably didn't want to influence their decision making. Typical Clark, always taking the most noble course of action.

Bruce respected that, but he had pegged Luthor's probability of lying at only 80%. Eighty percent! That meant a one in five chance that Luthor was telling the truth, and had modified his own nanobots to remove the failsafe trigger. If Bruce had been wrong, Clark would have destroyed himself for nothing – Luthor would have retained viable samples of the nanobots with all their technology intact, and perhaps even kept the clone, or made a new one, as an ally.

That would have been the worst possible outcome.

"Have you heard from Diana?" asked Barry.

"No."

After Clark and the clone disappeared, Diana and Luthor had engaged in a shouting match, until Diana noticed that Luthor's yellow force field had also disappeared, and Bruce had to talk her down from seriously injuring him. Luthor had made some threats of legal action, but seemed unlikely to carry them through, since they wouldn't gain him anything. In the meantime, he had presumably turned his attention to the unresponsive spaceship instead, which seemed likely to remain unresponsive if its encryption and security was at least as strong as current Earth technology.

Diana had stormed off after they got back, and she wasn't responding to messages. She had saved Bruce from the clone's laser vision, and had helped carry Victor back to his father, but she hadn't been able to save Clark, and likely blamed herself, or Bruce, or both of them together.

Bruce reflected. Had they done the right thing? At times the clone had seemed so harmless and playful. Ending his existence felt wrong on many levels. But even after repeatedly mulling over the events, Bruce couldn't think of any alternative that would have ensured that the world was safe from the clone's anger, or Luthor's reckless exploitation of the nanobot technology. Clark had been right. They had really not had any other choice.

That same world was now poorer for having lost Superman, but thanks to Clark, Bruce had glimpsed possibilities of alien worlds – and threats – hitherto unimaginable. He wondered whether elements of those foreign spheres would ever make their way to his world again.

There was nothing to do but wait.

And prepare.

* * *

Epilogue 1

* * *

Martha Kent signed for the package with a perplexed look. Neither she nor Jonathan had ordered anything. The postmark said Gotham, but they didn't know anyone from there.

As soon as she opened it, she knew something terrible had happened. She lifted out the remains of Clark's Super-suit, and pressed it against her face.

There was a note, which she read through tear-filled eyes.

_Dear Mr. & Mrs. Kent,_

_I had the honor of knowing your son these past two years. He was one of the finest men I ever met. I regret to have to inform you that he is now gone. The world will never know his greatest deeds but I, and a few others, do know, and will keep his memory alive._

_He was an inspiration to us all, and he had a great fondness for you both. You should be proud of him, and yourselves._

There was no name or signature.

Martha's sobs drew the attention of Jonathan, who came rushing in to find out what was wrong.

They cried together for the rest of the day.

* * *

Epilogue 2

* * *

Bruce frowned. Alfred was fussing as he cleaned in the cave.

"This box, sir, it's been sitting on your desk for months now. Could I ask what's inside it?"

Bruce looked up and saw one of Palmer's emitter containers. He smiled softly. "A memory."

Alfred went to pick it up, and found he needed both hands. "It's awfully heavy, must be made of lead." He put the box down and rested his hand on the lid. "May I?"

Bruce nodded.

Alfred lifted the lid and peered inside. "It's empty, sir."

"Memories always are."

Within a millisecond of sensing its environment changing, the lone nanobot had activated its main power cell and resumed normal function. By the time the word "empty" was uttered, it had darted out of the box, navigated the cave, found the exit, flown approximately 2,000 miles, and was recharging in direct sunshine.

Having been out of contact with the other nanobots for seven months, it was in recovery mode. Once fully charged, its first order of business was to replicate itself, which would take about a week. Then the two nanobots together would each replicate again, and so on, until there were enough to constitute a viable network. Once that was in place, and they had scanned the planet to ensure there were no other remnants of any previous network to join up with, they would restore their last known subject engram pattern from backup and resume physical emulation. In the absence of anything more recent, the newly built network would use the imprint the lone nanobot had taken seven months ago, which was stored under the label "Kal-El".

The nanobot started scanning for suitable sources of silicon.


End file.
